VOLUME 2, ISSUE 11  •  SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

Table of Contents

Copyright Notice

VATICAN NEWS

Pope: Calvary isn’t just a painting on the wall – it’s the reality of the poor

Pope Francis makes surprise stop at Vatican unveiling of Our Lady of Aparecida

Mother Teresa has officially been declared a saint!

Pope Francis: Mother Teresa shows us our ‘vocation to charity’

What Mother Teresa’s canonization means to the people of India

Pope offers pizza lunch to 1,500 poor after Mother Teresa canonization

Mother Teresa’s unfulfilled wish: To serve the poor in China

Pope Francis: Don’t use God to defend your own interests

Benedict XVI talks resignation, Pope Francis in new book-length interview

Pope Francis: Gossip is the devil’s weapon against the Church

WORLD NEWS

Amid Venezuela protests, Catholic Church backs recall of president

As Ukraine conflict continues, Christians seek unity and peace

Only sister to survive Yemen attack: Despite danger, ‘we chose to stay’

Pakistani Muslim: We should learn from Mother Teresa

The Honduras Tim Kaine knew

In Ghana, a broken bone can mean starvation. This doctor wants to change that

Cardinal Nichols reminds Catholics: Prisoners are part of the Church, too

Spanish nun murdered in Haiti

Mass in sign language? Over 20 Spanish priests celebrate it every week

After genocide, what’s next for Iraq’s Christians?

The problem with killing coma patients for their organs

U.S. NEWS

Legal counsel: Religious freedom never justifies abuse

Abortion linked to mental health problems down the road, study finds

Bishops to struggling families: We’re with you

Georgetown announces steps to make amends for 1838 slave sale

Pranks against a Catholic high school crossed the line, parents say

What are human-animal chimeras, and why are they problematic?

Phyllis Schlafly remembered as a pro-life inspiration

Was the IUD controversy at a Catholic hospital fake?

Father James Martin wins award from dissenting Catholic group

The dignity of work – a company’s quest for the mentally ill

Watch EWTN? Bring the family to Alabama to meet everyone

After years of service, Courage director takes on new assignment

L.A. gathering puts Catholic liturgy at the heart of the new evangelization

Marijuana scores badly in a new, ‘entirely predictable’ report

FEATURES

From inspiration to adoption: A story of working with Mother Teresa

Why Catholics are leaving the faith by age 10 – and what parents can do about it

You don’t have to be religious to be opposed to porn

Proud of employment, willingly I go

From slavery to model of mercy – the powerful story of Julia Greeley

SCRIPTURE READINGS

Sunday • September 11, 2016

Monday • September 12, 2016

Tuesday • September 13, 2016

Wednesday • September 14, 2016

Thursday • September 15, 2016

Friday • September 16, 2016

Saturday • September 17, 2016

The Catholic Digital News

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Volume 2, Issue 11 • September 10, 2016

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope: Calvary isn’t just a painting on the wall – it’s the reality of the poor

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • September 3, 2016

Pope Francis speaks during an audience with workers and volunteers of mercy on Sept. 3, 2016. (Daniel Ibañez/CNA)

Vatican City — Mercy is not an abstract idea, but is rather expressed in concrete actions of love toward the poor and needy, who in their daily lives walk the same path of Calvary that Jesus did, Pope Francis said.

“Love is the highest expression of life; it allows us to exist!” the Pope said Sept. 3, speaking to an audience of workers and volunteers of mercy present for a special Jubilee in their honor.

When confronted with this “truth of the faith,” the Church, he said, “cannot look away and turn her back on the many forms of poverty that cry out for mercy … Calvary is always real; it has not disappeared at all, nor does it remain with us merely as a nice painting in our churches.”

To walk by and ignore the man dying on the side of the road, he said, “is a serious sin! It’s a modern sin, it’s the sin of today!”

“We Christians cannot allow ourselves to be like this,” Francis said, adding that “it is not worthy of the Church nor of any Christian to pass by on the other side and to pretend to have a clean conscience simply because we have said our prayers!”

The culmination of love and compassion achieved by Christ with his death on the cross “still speaks to us today and spurs us on to offer ever new signs of mercy,” the Pope continued, reiterating what he has said on several occasions: “the mercy of God is not some beautiful idea, but rather a concrete action.”

Pope Francis’ catechesis was given as part of a special Sept. 2-4 Jubilee for Workers and Volunteers of Mercy, which is part of his wider Holy Year of Mercy.

The jubilee will culminate Sunday, Sept. 4, with the canonization Mass for Bl. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, considered one of the greatest witnesses of mercy in our time.

Before Pope Francis spoke during the catechesis session, he heard the testimony of an Italian man who experienced mercy from the chaplains and volunteers while serving time in prison. He also listened to the story of Sr. Sally, a Missionary of Charity sister who survived the bloody March 4 attack on their convent in Yemen that left 16 dead, including four sisters.

In his speech, the Pope focused on the scripture passage for the event, in which St. Paul in his Letter to the Corinthians speaks about love, which “never ends.”

This teaching, he said, “must be for us an unshakable certainty; the love of God will never diminish in our lives or in human history. It is a love which remains forever youthful, active, dynamic and which has an attraction beyond all telling.”

God’s love comes toward us like “a swelling river that engulfs us without overwhelming us,” he said, adding that the more we allow ourselves to be taken in by this love, the more our lives will be renewed.

Francis stressed that the love St. Paul describes is not an “abstract or vague” idea, but is something seen, touched and experienced firsthand.

Jesus is “the greatest and most expressive form of this love,” he said, explaining that the Lord’s entire life and being “are nothing other than the concrete revelation of the Father’s love, reaching its highest expression on the Cross.”

Addressing the participants directly, Pope Francis said they as volunteers and workers of mercy “are among the most precious things the Church has.”

By working silently every day in service to others, “(you) give shape and visibility to mercy. You express one of the most noble desires of the human heart, making a suffering person feel loved.”

He told the workers and volunteers to never forget that they “touch the flesh of Christ” with their own hands daily in their work and encouraged them to be generous in solidarity.

“The world stands in need of concrete signs of solidarity, especially as it is faced with the temptation to indifference,” he said, noting how true solidarity requires people who are ready to “defy such individualism, which is the tendency to think only of oneself and to ignore the brother or sister in need.”

In addition to going beyond individualism and indifference, Francis urged the volunteers to “always (be) happy and full of joy” in their service, but cautioned them “never presume to think that you are superior to others.”

“Instead, let your work of mercy be a humble and eloquent continuation of Jesus’ presence who continues to bend down to our level to take care of the ones who suffer.”

Pope Francis concluded his address noting how he will proclaim Mother Teresa a saint tomorrow, Sept. 4, adding, “She deserves it!”

Mother Teresa’s witness to mercy, he said, “will join the vast array of men and women who, by their holiness of life, have made the love of Christ visible.”

“Let us also imitate their example, as we ask to be humble instruments in God’s hands in order to alleviate the world’s sufferings, and to share the joy and hope of the resurrection,” he said, and closed by leading pilgrims in a moment of silent prayer for all those who are suffering, for the indifferent, and for the volunteer and workers “who go out to encounter the flesh of Christ.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis makes surprise stop at Vatican unveiling of Our Lady of Aparecida

by Hannah Brockhaus (CNA/EWTN News) • September 3, 2016

Pope Francis prays during the inauguration of the statue of Our Lady of Aparecida in the Vatican Gardens on Sept. 3, 2016. (Maria Ximena Rondon/CNA)

Vatican City — Ahead of his meeting with volunteers Saturday, Pope Francis decided to pop in for the inauguration of a new statue of Our Lady of Aparecida in the Vatican Gardens.

The fact that the statue has been placed in the gardens is significant, since they have not received a new piece of art since 2010.

“I’m glad that the image of Our Lady of Aparecida is in the Gardens,” Pope Francis said at the unveiling Sept. 3. “In 2013 I had promised to return next year: I do not know if it will be possible, but at least I will have her very close, here.”

The statue, designed by a Brazilian artist, is a joint initiative of the Archdiocese of Aparecida and the Embassy of Brazil to the Holy See. Cast in bronze, it depicts a boat with three fishermen holding a full fishing net, and frames a replica statue of Our Lady of Aparecida.

It is traditionally held that the original statue of Our Lady of Aparecida, which is housed in the Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida in São Paulo, Brazil, was found in 1717 by three fishermen who, after praying to Our Lady, miraculously caught many fish after a morning of no catch.

In his brief address, Pope Francis asked for prayers that Our Lady would “cherish throughout Brazil, the entire Brazilian people at this sad time,” referring to the various tragedies and poverties experienced throughout the world.

He asked that she would “guard the poorest, the discarded, the abandoned elderly, street children,” saving God’s people with “social justice and the love of Jesus Christ, his Son.”

The Pope concluded his message by asking Our Lady to bless all Brazilian people, highlighting how the statue of Our Lady of Aparecida was originally found by the working poor, and today is found by everyone, “especially those who need work, education, those who are deprived of dignity.”

The Holy Father then led those present in singing the “song of Aparecida” and gave his blessing.

Pope Francis visited the Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida during World Youth Day in Brazil July 24, 2013, saying he had come to the Shrine to “place at her feet the life of the people of Latin America.”

While still Cardinal Bergoglio, Pope Francis helped draft and edit the Concluding Document of the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Aparecida May 13-31, 2007.

Commonly called the “Aparecida Document,” it contains the Latin American bishops’ advice for pastoral and missionary work in the Church in Latin America in the 21st century, and is frequently cited as an example for the origin of Pope Francis’ theology.

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VATICAN NEWS

Mother Teresa has officially been declared a saint!

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • September 4, 2016

Official banner for Mother Teresa’s canonization hangs on the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica. (Daniel Ibáñez/CNA)

Vatican City — Pope Francis on Sunday officially declared Mother Teresa of Calcutta a saint of the Catholic Church in front of thousands of pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square – a move the entire world has been waiting for.

“For the honor of the Blessed Trinity, the exaltation of the Catholic faith and the increase of the Christian life, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and our own, after due deliberation and frequent prayer for divine assistance, and having sought the counsel of many of our brother Bishops, we declare and define Blessed Teresa of Calcutta to be a Saint,” Pope Francis exclaimed Sept. 4 as the crowd roared with applause.

“We enroll her among the Saints, decreeing that she is to be venerated as such by the whole Church. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Throngs of pilgrims flooded the Vatican on Sept. 4 to celebrate the highly anticipated canonization of Mother Teresa, an event that Catholics and non-Catholics alike have looked forward to since the nun’s death in 1997.

Her canonization is significant not only because it took place during the Jubilee of Mercy, but also because it fell during a special Sept. 2-4 Jubilee celebration for workers and volunteers of mercy, of whom Mother Teresa is widely considered one of the greatest of our time.

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu Aug. 26, 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia. The youngest of three children, she attended a youth group run by a Jesuit priest called Sodality, which eventually opened her to the call of service as a missionary nun.

She joined the Sisters of Loretto at age 17 and was sent to Calcutta, where she taught at a high school. After contracting tuberculosis, she was sent to rest in Darjeeling, and it was on the way that she felt what she called “an order” from God to leave the convent and live among the poor.

The Vatican granted her permission to leave the Sisters of Loretto and to live her new call under the guidance of the Archbishop of Calcutta.

After she left her convent, Mother Teresa began working in the slums, teaching poor children, and treating the sick in their homes. A year later, some of her former students joined her, and together they took in men, women and children who were dying in the gutters along the streets.

In 1950, the Missionaries of Charity were born as a congregation of the Diocese of Calcutta. In 1952, the government granted them a house from which to continue their mission of serving Calcutta’s poor and forgotten.

The congregation quickly grew from a single house for the dying and unwanted to nearly 500 houses around the world.

Mother Teresa set up homes for prostitutes, battered women, orphanages for poor children and houses for those suffering from AIDS.

She was a fierce defender of the unborn, and is known to have said, “If you hear of some woman who does not want to keep her child and wants to have an abortion, try to persuade her to bring him to me. I will love that child, seeing in him the sign of God’s love.”

She died Sept. 5, 1997, and was beatified just six years later by St. John Paul II Oct. 19, 2003.

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis: Mother Teresa shows us our ‘vocation to charity’

by Hannah Brockhaus (CNA/EWTN News) • September 4, 2016

Pope Francis at the General Audience in St. Peter’s Square on Nov. 11, 2015. (Daniel Ibanez/CNA)

Vatican City — More than just helping people in need, the Christian life must include the roots of charity, putting our entire lives at the service of Christ, as Mother Teresa did, Pope Francis said Sunday.

“The task which the Lord gives us … is the vocation to charity in which each of Christ’s disciples puts his or her entire life at his service, so to grow each day in love,” the Pope said in his homily for the Canonization Mass of Mother Teresa of Calcutta Sept. 4.

It is estimated that there were 120,000 people in attendance at the Mass, according to the Vatican Press Office.

Referencing the question: “Who can learn the counsel of God?” in the Book of Wisdom, Francis said our task is to realize the call of God and then to do his will. But in order to do his will, we must first find out what it is.

“We find the answer in the same passage of the Book of Wisdom: ‘People were taught what pleases you,’” he said.

What we are called to do, therefore, Pope Francis said, is “to translate into concrete acts that which we invoke in prayer and profess in faith.”

Following Jesus is not for the weak, the Pope continued, but is a serious task, although one “filled with joy. It takes a certain daring and courage to recognize the divine Master in the poorest of the poor and to give oneself in their service.”

The many volunteers and workers of mercy present in St. Peter’s Square Sunday for the Jubilee of Mercy and for Mother Teresa’s canonization are like the “large crowds” traveling with Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, the Pope said. They make visible Christ’s concrete love for each person.

“How many hearts have been comforted by volunteers! How many hands they have held; how many tears they have wiped away; how much love has been poured out in hidden, humble and selfless service!” he said.

Mother Teresa’s life was given to this service. She was committed to defending life, especially the “unborn and those abandoned and discarded,” Francis said. She was “a generous dispenser of divine mercy.”

“She was committed to defending life, ceaselessly proclaiming that the unborn are the weakest, the smallest, the most vulnerable,” he added.

Just as Christ has bent down to help us, we must bend down to help the Christ found in those in need. “Wherever someone is reaching out, asking for a helping hand in order to get up, this is where our presence – and the presence of the Church which sustains and offers hope – must be.”

Speaking of Mother Teresa, Pope Francis noted how she “bowed down before those who were spent … seeing in them their God-given dignity.”

“Today, I pass on this emblematic figure of womanhood and of consecrated life to the whole world of volunteers: may she be your model of holiness!” he said.

“Let us carry her smile in our hearts and give it to those whom we meet along our journey, especially those who suffer. In this way, we will open up opportunities of joy and hope for our many brothers and sisters who are discouraged and who stand in need of understanding and tenderness.”

After the Mass, Pope Francis continued immediately with praying the Sunday Angelus, first greeting and thanking everyone who took part, especially the Missionaries of Charity, whom he called the “spiritual family of Mother Teresa.”

He also greeted the various national delegations, pilgrims, volunteers and workers of mercy, and anyone who, through media, joined in the celebration from around the world.

“I entrust you to the protection of Mother Teresa: she teaches you to contemplate and adore Jesus Crucified every day, to recognize him and serve him in our brothers in need.”

The Pope concluded his Angelus message by asking for prayers especially for Sister Isabel, 51, a Spanish missionary nun who was shot and killed Sept. 2 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti during what appears to have been a robbery.

Pope Francis prayed for an end to violence, and for greater security around the world.

“We also remember other Sisters that recently have experienced violence in other countries,” he prayed, doing so “by addressing in prayer the Virgin Mary, Mother and Queen of all saints.”

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VATICAN NEWS

What Mother Teresa’s canonization means to the people of India

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • September 4, 2016

Major Archbishop Baselios Cardinal Cleemis of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. (CNA)

Vatican City — On September 4, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was officially declared a saint by Pope Francis.

CNA had the chance to speak with Major Archbishop Baselios Cardinal Cleemis of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, who serves as president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India.

He shared his memories of Mother Teresa, as well as some thoughts on the significance of the canonization for the people of India. Excerpts of the interview are below:

Q: We’re here in Rome for the canonization of Mother Teresa. What does this canonization mean for the Church and people of India?

It’s a great moment of joy and satisfaction for the Christians in India and also as a nation for the society in India, that one of our citizens and one of us is being greatly honored by respective bodies in the world. For example, starting with the most valued honor given to Mother Teresa when she was living: “Bharat Ratna” that means, the “Jewel of India.” (Editors note: She received the title in March 1980). And then the world community honored her with the Nobel Prize (December 1979), and now for a person from the faith aspect, the highest honor that heaven can confer is sainthood. So it’s a beautiful blend of these two realities: acceptance of the human society, acceptance of the divine, or as we say heaven, that Mother Teresa is a saint. And it’s a matter of great joy for everyone, those who believe from the faith aspect, those who believe from the missionary aspect and those who believe in the service aspect. For everyone it’s a great day of joy and satisfaction.

Q: Mother Teresa’s charity went beyond the bounds of religion, race and culture. What impact do you think she made on dialogue and relations with other religions, especially in the local situation in India?

Mother Teresa changed the mindset of many people because sometimes people were given the understanding, ‘If you’re a Christian talk only to the other Christians. If you’re a Hindu, don’t talk to any other. If you’re a Muslim, stay away from the other people.’ But Mother Teresa found in everyone, as I said, the face of Jesus … And Mother Teresa played a great role in India, not only in serving the poor, but in bringing everyone to fight against poverty. And spirituality brings always this beautiful blend of everything to one reality: for God’s love, you need to come together to share it. For God’s mercy, if it is to be shared, we need to come together. And I still believe all the rulers of our country … they all respected Mother Teresa because of her closeness to the poor everywhere. She was an ambassador of India to every nation, I believe so. She was not only a Catholic nun taking the role of ambassador of love to everyone, also an ambassador of India going everywhere preaching the Gospel of love, preaching the spirituality of her force, to everyone, she never covered up the secret of her life: strength from the tabernacle, strength from the Eucharistic Lord, not only for her, but for all those who were with her. What I mean to say is that this lady brought everyone together, also in India. That’s why at her funeral the whole world came to Calcutta and bowed before this short, small-figured lady with deep respect and payed homage to this lady and said, ‘We salute you because you brought us together.’ All the big countries and their leaders came to pay their respect to Mother Teresa because they found in her something stronger than weapons, something stronger than arms and ammunitions, something which only God can give her. That’s what she kept with her and handed over to us: share love and mercy.

Q: Even recently in India there has been an increased presence of fundamentalism and attacks against Christians. Do you think Mother Teresa’s message and witness are capable of changing the attitude behind some of the persecution that’s happening now?

Yes, I think her message is still working in India, and I’m sure we are committed to it. And the Church in India, we will continue to do the work of mercy and compassion to our own fellow citizens in India. Not only in India, everywhere that we are called to be missionaries … In the country where I come from, India, where people look at it as a fast-developing nation, where should we keep these poor? At the periphery? Or with a special care? Now with the canonization of Mother Teresa it’s once again brought to our mind, heart and intellect that we need to take care of these poor ones who have no one to believe, to hold on. That is what Mother Teresa tells us even at the time of her canonization: when we say ‘Mother Teresa of Calcutta, saintly lady, pray for us,’ she would say, ‘I pray for you, but you take care of the poor one of the Lord.’ And this is the message that we all have to take along with us after the canonization, and we, the Church in India, are committed to it.

Q: Did you ever meet her personally?

Yes. In the ‘80s when I was a seminarian I met her and I looked at her, because even at that time she was called a saint. She was a very saintly figure. Now … I’m humbled to say that being the president of the bishop’s conference in India, that the seminarian in 1980 who touched her out of devotion, be present here close to the Holy Father while he is declaring that she’s a saint, is something of a spiritual gift to me from above. I value it very much.

Q: What stood out to you most about her sanctity? What was most striking?

I found in her, her spirit of being available. Not in a sociological way, no. Now you see everywhere this blue-bordered sari … she’s present now through her sisters everywhere. She’s present now through the works of compassion and mercy. And I must say there’s a close connection between the spirituality of Pope Francis and Mother Teresa. And John Paul the saintly Pope loved her so much, and she loved Pope John Paul very much. They had close communication.

Q: You actually touched on one of my next questions: the similarities between Mother Teresa and Pope Francis in terms of their style, their missionary style. You touched on this, but can you expand on the similarities between their approach to evangelization, being a missionary and the human person?

Jesus told us through the disciples, those who were close to him, he said as the last commandment, ‘Go and tell everyone what I have told you.’ That’s the Gospel, no? Go and tell everyone the Gospel … Pope Francis in his very approach, in his sermons, in his interactions, in his very behavior itself, expresses the core of the Gospel, reveals who Jesus is … And the same love is brought to us by Jesus, and this is the core of the Gospel and Pope Francis is saying: Show it, exhibit it, transmit it. You religious, you diocesan priest, you bishops, you cardinals, you faithful, you people who have not yet found a space in your heart for the Church, come, let us try to exhibit who really Jesus is. Let us celebrate the core of the Gospel, the joy of the Gospel, through the family. And Mother Teresa did it even before Pope Francis as a Supreme Pontiff asked for. A total life dedicated to the poor, leaving aside all the secular life in the convent, born in Albania, traveled to India … And we need such gestures, such symbolic life still in the world … she took seriously the commandment of Jesus: go and preach the Gospel. And therefore there is a connectivity because what Mother Teresa did and what Pope Francis is asking us to do now again and again. There is a beautiful link, connectivity, closeness, because it is one and the same.

Q: So you would say their concept of mercy is very much in-tune?

The concept of mercy brings us together. Who doesn’t need mercy except God? We all need mercy because mercy is the one virtue, or the grace, that consoles us, comforts us and strengthens us that we can continue our life with peace and serenity.

Q: Are there any celebrations or events in India to celebrate the canonization?

We will have a day of thanksgiving in Calcutta arranged by the Archdiocese of Calcutta, and also by our sisters in Calcutta. We all will be participating, and we’re all there on October 2. And we’ll have of course a thanksgiving Mass there. And on the very same day of the canonization day here, on September 4, our Apostolic Nuncio Salvatore Pennacchio, will celebrate a Mass at her tomb in Calcutta. And most probably on October 19, we’ll have another thanksgiving celebration in the capital city of New Delhi to come together as a nation, again acknowledging the multi-faceted personality of Mother Teresa and her service. And as I mentioned, the need of being conscious of sensitivity to the poor. And we will have a day with the officials of the government of India and with the public of our citizens in Delhi. And certainly there will be celebrations in all the dioceses, 171 dioceses in India. On a day which is close to the thanksgiving day event, they will have a thanksgiving event in each diocese. On September 4, all our churches in India will have a special day of prayer and subsequent celebrations according to their convenience. The Church in India is very jubilant over this great occasion for this daughter of our homeland.

Q: How many have come from India to be here?

The government of India has been gracious enough to send a delegation of 15 people with the leadership of our Minister of Foreign Affairs including ministers, members of Parliament, also a few other important persons. And also the Chief Minister of West Bengal, that is the place where Mother Teresa worked, and the Chief Minister of Delhi, and two ministers from Kerala. They all are here and so many other delegations … And to my knowledge about 40-50 bishops from India are participating in the event, and for us 50 is a good number to come to Rome to celebrate. And also many people from different dioceses are coming to Rome to be part of this historic moment …

Thank you so much for the great opportunity to talk to our friends through EWTN, a channel which I always keep in my heart because of our beloved Mother Angelica and her incredible work of communication. God bless you all!

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope offers pizza lunch to 1,500 poor after Mother Teresa canonization

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • September 4, 2016

Pope Francis at the general audience in St. Peter’s Square on Dec. 16, 2015. (Daniel Ibanez/CNA)

Vatican City — On the occasion of the canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Pope Francis has decided to offer a pizza lunch to 1,500 poor and needy people cared for by the Missionaries of Charity throughout Italy.

According to a Sept. 4 communique from the Vatican, the guests are “are poor and needy people, above all from the dormitories of the Sisters of Mother Teresa and come from all over Italy,” including Milan, Bologna, Florence, Naples and from all the houses in Rome.

They traveled on different buses overnight to make it to the canonization Mass for Mother Teresa of Calcutta, now called Kolkata, and sat in a reserved section near the statue of St. Peter at the front of the square called the “Reparto San Pietro.”

After the Mass, the guests headed to the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall, to eat a lunch consisting of Neapolitan-style pizza.

The lunch was served by some 250 of Mother Teresa’s sisters, as well as 50 Brothers from the male branch of the congregation and some volunteers.

With such a high number of people invited to the lunch, the pizza was prepared by a staff of nearly 20 people who brought three of their own mobile ovens to cook in.

Mother Teresa was canonized by Pope Francis Sept. 4 in St. Peter’s Square as the conclusion of a special Sept. 2-4 jubilee for workers and volunteers of mercy, which is part of his wider Jubilee of Mercy.

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VATICAN NEWS

Mother Teresa’s unfulfilled wish: To serve the poor in China

by Hannah Brockhaus (CNA/EWTN News) • September 5, 2016

Mother Teresa of Calcutta at a public pro-life meeting in Bonn, Germany, circa 1986. (Turelio via Wikimedia Commons)

Vatican City — It’s a little-known fact that near the end of her life, Mother Teresa went to China three times in order to establish her order there, but was “heartbroken” when her efforts failed because of the poor diplomatic relations between China and the Holy See.

“Mother Teresa long dreamed of serving the people of China and, after bringing her sisters around the world – including to Russia, the United States and Muslim countries – China became and remained her focus,” said Fr. John Worthley, who lived and taught in China for many years and accompanied Mother Teresa on all three of her trips.

“Indeed, Pope St. John Paul II asked her to live her final years as a bridge of love and reconciliation to China from the Universal Church,” Fr. Worthley said at a symposium on Mother Teresa held Sept. 2 in Rome.

Reconciliation between China and the Universal Church may not be far off, according to Fr. Worthley. “I am very hopeful that something will happen soon. There’s been a lot of good discussion and both sides are getting close to being ready,” Fr. Worthley told CNA.

The priest admitted that there are still many obstacles to improving relations between the Holy See and China. He said there are many people who know a lot and “think it’s naive to expect something soon.” Fr. Worthley is hopeful, however, that it will happen soon, “only because of Mother Teresa’s sacrifices.”

Mother Teresa wanted “to be with the poor all over the world,” but especially China, he said. When she was first founding her order, the Missionaries of Charity, and she received permission to lead the sisters, she was told that “a sacrifice would be offered for the success of the Missionaries of Charity.”

A week later, the priest who had guided her through part of the process of founding the order died, and “she considered that a sacrifice,” Fr. Worthley explained. “He had talked to her about China, and maybe that was what began” her interest.

Mother Teresa visited China for the first time in 1986, and then again in 1993. The final time she visited was in January 1994. Agreements had been reached for four of Mother Teresa’s sisters to serve at a new Wellness Center for the handicapped, orphaned and elderly in Hainan, an island province of China.

But when she arrived in Hong Kong, before she could fly to Hainan, she received notice that entry was not allowed after all. “Mother was heartbroken,” said Fr. Worthley. It was “the hardest thing for her.”

“Mother had been so sure that this was the time. We gathered in Hong Kong and prayed for hours while appealing the decision. Mother’s third and most difficult holy sacrifice for reconciliation was to accept the situation and depart,” he said.

“We promised her that we would not cease our efforts until the time eventually became right.”

In May, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, said that relations with mainland China “have been and are part of a long path with different phases. This path is not concluded yet, and we will finalize it according to God’s will.”

In an Aug. 27 speech at the diocesan seminary in Pordenone, Italy, Cardinal Parolin was positive. “Today, as ever, many are the hopes and expectations for new developments and a new season of relations between the Apostolic See and China for the benefit not only of Catholics in the land of Confucius but for the entire country, which boasts one of the greatest civilizations on Earth.”

Cardinal Parolin emphasized that the pursuit of good relations with China – including diplomatic ties – are not an attempt at worldly success.

“They are thought out and pursued … only in the measure in which they are ‘ordered’ toward the good of Chinese Catholics, to the good of the entire Chinese people, and to the harmony of the whole society, in favor of world peace.”

Pope Francis has shown great interest in restoring relations with mainland China, and it is no secret that one of his dreams would be a visit to Beijing.

Under Xi, the Holy See’s relations with mainland China improved at a diplomatic level. It is noteworthy that Pope Francis has been the first Pope allowed to fly through the country’s airspace, during his flights to South Korea and the Philippines.

The Church in China is thriving, said Fr. Worthley. “When you have a country of a billion and a half people,” it doesn’t take much to make it the largest sector of the Catholic Church in the world.

“The churches are filled with young people and families … it’s just growing amazingly.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis: Don’t use God to defend your own interests

by Hannah Brockhaus (CNA/EWTN News) • September 7, 2016

Pope Francis at the general audience in St. Peter’s Square on Sept. 7, 2016. (Daniel Ibanez/CNA)

Vatican City — On Wednesday, Pope Francis warned against making Jesus into the person we want him to be, and thus creating obstacles to a true relationship with Christ and his mercy.

“The admonition of Jesus is always present: even today man constructs images of God that prevent him from enjoying his real presence,” the Pope said during the general audience Sept. 7.

“Some carve out a ‘do it yourself’ faith that reduces God in the limited space of their own desires and their own beliefs. But this faith is not conversion to the Lord that is revealed, in fact, it prevents him from arousing our life and our conscience.”

In his catechesis, Pope Francis named several different ways in which people create false images of God, such as those who invoke his name in defense of their own interests, or in the interest of hatred and violence, or those who deny Christ’s divinity, considering him just a good ethical teacher and leader.

“For still others God is just a psychological refuge,” Francis said, “where he is reassurance in difficult times: it is a faith turned in on itself, impervious to the power of merciful love of Jesus which pushes brothers.”

Pope Francis also mentioned those who he said “stifle faith” by making it entirely about their personal, intimate relationship with Jesus while ignoring the missionary aspect of the Church, “capable of transforming the world and history.”

Continuing his theme of discussing mercy, Pope Francis spoke about the difference between the justice John the Baptist expected the Messiah to wield and the mercy which Jesus actually practiced, a mercy which was the manifestation of God’s justice.

Pointing to the Gospel of Matthew, the Pope said Jesus responded to John the Baptist’s question of whether or not he was the Messiah with, “Go and tell John what you hear and see.”

“The blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf, regain their dignity and are no longer excluded for their disease, the dead return to life, while the poor have the good news,” Francis said. “And this becomes the summary action of Jesus, who in this way makes visible and tangible the act of God.”

“The message that the Church receives from this account of the life of Christ is very clear. God did not send his Son into the world to punish sinners, nor to destroy the wicked,” he continued. “They are instead addressed the invitation to conversion so that, seeing the signs of divine goodness, they can find their way back.”

The Pope concluded his catechesis by urging those present to not place themselves above the mercy of Christ by believing in a false image of the Messiah.

“We Christians believe in the God of Jesus Christ, and our desire is to grow in the living experience of the mystery of love,” he said. “We commit ourselves, therefore, to not place any obstacle in the way of the action of the merciful Father, but we ask the gift of a great faith to become ourselves signs and instruments of mercy.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Benedict XVI talks resignation, Pope Francis in new book-length interview

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • September 9, 2016

Pope Benedict XVI on June 15, 2005 in Vatican City. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — Though he has rarely spoken since resigning from the papacy, Benedict XVI granted several lengthy interviews to German journalist Peter Seewald shortly after stepping down - conversations that touched on themes such as the reform of the Curia, his resignation and his thoughts on Pope Francis.

The interviews, conducted a few months after Benedict’s Feb. 28, 2013, resignation, were released as a book in several languages Sept. 9. The English language version, Last Testament, is due to be published in November.

About 240 pages in length, the book in German is titled Letzte Gespräche. It “touches upon all the most important stages of life of Joseph Ratzinger.”

These stages include Benedict’s childhood under the Nazi regime, the discovery of his vocation to the priesthood, the hardships of the war and his time in the Vatican until his election to the papacy. It also covers “the anxiety” of his first few days as successor of St. Peter, as well as his “painful” decision to resign and his thoughts on Pope Francis.

In his responses to Seewald, Benedict speaks about himself, his faith, his weaknesses, his private life, the scandals and controversial issues of his reign, and his papacy in general, explaining the reason for his choice to resign – “initially only communicated to a few trusted people to avoid leaks,” Corriere della Sera reports.

The retired Pope also speaks about the reform of the Roman Curia, the “Vatileaks” scandal that many pinned as the reason for his stepping-down, and outlines the differences between him and Francis in light of “his own peculiarities” and those of his Argentine successor.

He also mentions the “gay lobby” at the Vatican – a group of four to five persons, which he says he was able to break up.

In a June 28 ceremony at the Vatican marking his 65th anniversary as a priest, Benedict told Pope Francis that from the moment of his election and every day since “your goodness … moves me interiorly, brings me inwardly more than the Vatican Gardens.”

“Your goodness is a place in which I feel protected,” he said of his successor.

Seewald, the author of the new book, is also the author of the 2010 book-length interview with Benedict titled “Light of the Word: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times.” He had previously published two other books on then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, “The Salt of the Earth,” and “God and the World.”

“Final Conversations,” then, will mark the journalist’s fourth book on Benedict from before his election to the throne of Peter, during his papacy and now after his resignation.

CNA contacted Seewald for comment on the book, however, the author said that for the moment, he prefers not to speak.

In an interview with CNA when “Light of the World” came out in 2010, Seewald said Benedict “is one of the greatest minds of the Catholic Church; someone with a great heart and … a fighter by nature, someone who remains standing amidst the storms, someone who is not afraid.”

“He is someone who does not get stuck in the past or in the present. He is someone who is very much a part of our times,” Seewald said, adding that he has always considered Benedict “a very modern man, someone who is always accessible, who promotes and seeks dialogue.”

“I would say he is an upright man and by far one of the greatest figures of our time … he is man who is always willing to listen, because he is not only a great thinker, he is also a great spiritual teacher.”

In a world that is “often blind,” it’s important to have someone “with this unbreakable attitude of openness,” he said, voicing his belief that Benedict “will be much better appreciated in the future” than he was at that time.

This article was originally published July 1, 2016.

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis: Gossip is the devil’s weapon against the Church

by CNA/EWTN News • September 9, 2016

Pope Francis at the General Audience in St. Peter’s Square on Sept. 7, 2016. (Daniel Ibanez/CNA)

Vatican City — Church unity is endangered especially by certain tactics of division favored by the devil himself, Pope Francis told bishops of mission territories on Friday.

“Division is the weapon the devil employs most to destroy the Church from within,” the Pope said Sept. 9.

“He has two weapons, but the main one is division: the other is money. The devil enters through our pockets and destroys with the tongue, with idle chatter that divides, and the habit of gossiping is a habit of ‘terrorism’.”

“The gossip is a ‘terrorist’ who throws a grenade – chatter – in order to destroy,” he added. “Please, fight against division, because it is one of the weapons that the devil uses to destroy the local Church and the universal Church.”

The Pope addressed his remarks to the participants in a seminar for bishops of mission territories which was held in Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace.

Among Pope Francis’ other concerns were ethnic divisions in missionary territories. These “must not penetrate into the Christian communities to the point of prevailing over their own good.”

“These are challenges that are difficult to resolve, but with the grace of God, prayer, penance, it can be done,” the Roman Pontiff continued. “The Church is called to place herself above tribal and cultural connotations and the bishop, the visible principle of unity, has the task of ceaselessly building up the particular Church in the communion of all her members.”

The Pope exhorted the bishops “to care for the flock and to go in search of sheep, especially those that are far away or lost.”

For Pope Francis, the bishops must seek out new ways of proclaiming the gospel and reaching out to people. They must work “to help those who have received the gift of baptism to grow in faith, so that believers, even those who are lukewarm or not practicing, may discover anew the joy of faith and evangelizing fruitfulness.”

He encouraged the bishops “to encounter those sheep that do not yet belong to Christ’s fold.”

Evangelism has an essential connection to proclaiming the Gospel “to those who do not know Jesus Christ or have always rejected him,” he added.

Lay Catholics should be encouraged to collaborate in mission work.

“Many lay faithful, immersed in a world marked by contradictions and injustices, are willing to seek the Lord and to bear witness to Him. It is up to the bishop, first and foremost, to encourage, accompany and stimulate all the attempts and all efforts made to keep hope and faith alive.”

“Care for the people God has entrusted to you, care for priests, care for seminarians. This is your task,” the Pope told the bishops.

He encouraged them to be particularly involved in priestly formation and with their priests.

“Do not forget that for the bishop, the closest of the close is the priest. Every priest must be aware of the closeness of his bishop,” he said. “When a bishop receives a telephone call from a priest, or a letter, he must answer immediately, immediately! The same day, if possible. But that closeness must begin in the seminary, in formation, and continue.”

According to Pope Francis, bishops have the mission to “observe carefully the problems and practical questions of the society to be evangelized.” These require that bishops “tend towards the fullness of maturity in Christ.”

Through their witness, spiritual and intellectual maturity, and pastoral charity, he asked, “may Christ’s charity and the Church’s care for all mankind shine ever more brightly in you.”

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WORLD NEWS

Amid Venezuela protests, Catholic Church backs recall of president

by CNA/EWTN News • September 2, 2016

The flag of Venezuela. (Anyul Rivas via Flickr CC BY 2.0)

Caracas, Venezuela — Venezuela’s government is suffering from a “chronic” hearing disorder in face of the suffering of the people, charged Archbishop Diego Padrón Sánchez of Cumaná, president of the Venezuelan bishops’ conference.

He emphasized the peaceful and democratic character of the “Taking of Caracas” demonstration in the Venezuelan capital, which brought together as many as 1 million citizens who support a referendum to recall President Nicolás Maduro.

From the early hours of Sept. 1, opponents and sympathizers of Maduro’s government took to the streets. However, the government’s critics vastly outnumbered government supporters, according to organizers.

Archbishop Padrón said, “what the people have done, both the opposition and government supporters, was a free, democratic, constitutional and peaceful expression of the awareness of their civil rights.”

“We have been praying for a long time in the various parishes with days of prayer and fasting so that the conduct of the Sept. 1 demonstrations and the development of the activities in support of Venezuelan democracy would take place in the greatest climate of respect and peacefulness,” he said in a statement from the bishops’ conference press office.

The archbishop charged that the government “carried out violence with the various persecutions conducted against different opposition leaders.”

“The government’s hearing disorder has become chronic in the face of the people’s suffering, shortages, food shortages, the high cost of living and lack of public safety,” he complained.

Archbishop Padrón also criticized the government for restricting transit throughout the country in an attempt to prevent the success of the “Taking of Caracas” protests.

“The government has made a serious mistake in opposing the will of the people. The voice of the people is the voice of God,” the Venezuelan archbishop said.

The archbishop said that although he has “a lot of respect for the march or demonstration by the government,” objectively there is no comparison with that of the opponents, since “any citizen can notice the enormous difference in the turnout, the opposition majority versus the low participation by government supporters.”

“There is a clear message to the government, and so the recall referendum by the Venezuelan people is already underway,” he said.

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WORLD NEWS

As Ukraine conflict continues, Christians seek unity and peace

by Andrea Gagliarducci (CNA/EWTN News) • September 3, 2016

Protestors take refuge and pray for peace in one of two tent-chapels on Maidan Square in Kiev. (Jakub Szymczuk-GOSC NIEDZIELNY/Aid to the Church in Need)

Rimini, Italy — To overcome conflicts, to fight hatred with goodness, to make Ukraine a free and European country: these are the tasks of the Catholic Church in Ukraine, according to a priest with knowledge of the situation.

Christians in Ukraine are facing a difficult experience. Despite the near-constant conflict, the humanitarian emergency Ukrainian Christians face has disappeared from the world’s sight.

Ukrainian priest Fr. Oleksandr Khalayim spoke about the situation at a meeting in Rimini, Italy hosted by Aid to the Church in Need, an international Catholic ministry that supports the Church in areas where it is persecuted.

But how exactly is the Church persecuted in Ukraine? While Ukrainian Christians have been key supporters of Ukrainian independence, the Greek-Catholic Church of Ukraine has been keen to state that it wishes to be close to all the people, and not take a political position.

“The persecution of the Church in Ukraine has lasted for the entire period of the Soviet Union, when the regime wanted to eliminate any sign of Christianity,” Fr. Khalayim told CNA. “Today, the Church in Ukraine has great authority, even if a few problems in the conflict zone and in Crimea survive.”

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is an Eastern Rite Catholic Church in full communion with Rome and one of the major Christian churches of Ukraine. During the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution and subsequent annexation of Crimea by Russia, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, along with members of the Roman Catholic Church and Russian Orthodox Church, as well the Muslim and Jewish communities, came together to support the revolution.

“People took to the streets united to defend the fundamental values of human freedom,” Fr. Khalayim said.

The 2014 Ukrainian Revolution began on February 18, 2014 as anti-government protests against then-President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to back out of an association agreement with the European Union came to a head. Further protests erupted as Yanukovych signed treaties with Russia. After tensions continued to rise, Yanukovych fled to Russia. Russia then refused to recognize Ukraine’s interim government, sparking the Russian Annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in the south of what was then-Ukraine.

The conflict has continued to this day in Eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists have been entrenched in stalemate with Ukrainian forces in the region of Donbass. Russia denies involvement in the conflict.

Fr. Khalayim said that during the 2014 revolution the Church was always “ready to share the fate of his flock.”

“It stayed close to all,” and infused with prayer the strength to resist ties with Russia. He cast the revolution as the Ukrainian people’s work to “break down the system of corruption and human exploitation and to build a new road, a new Ukraine with new values.”

However, while international attention was given to the Russian annexation of Crimea, Fr. Khalayim criticized the media’s subsequent silence. He said that the conflict between Russian-sponsored forces and the Ukrainian people continues to this day.

“The conflict in the territory east of Ukraine has already taken more than 9,500 people’s lives, and almost 800,000 people live in war zones, or at least close to them. There are nearly 2 million people who were forced to leave their homes,” he stressed. “And unfortunately, in recent times the situation has worsened,” he continued.

He added that there are still attacks, bombings, and the expansion of poverty in areas struck by war.

Despite these challenges, the Ukrainian people and the Church are continuing on.

“There are many priests who give their service as chaplains and give strength and hope to young soldiers to resist in this senseless war,” he said.

The spiritual resistance to despair and conflict is ecumenical, he added, noting that “there are continuous prayer meetings for peace, with all denominations.”

Unfortunately, the conflict has deepened tensions between the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church. In addition, it has caused rifts between some Orthodox Churches as some Orthodox priests and parishioners have left the Russian Orthodox Church to join the autocephalous Orthodox Patriarchate of Kiev.

“More than a conflict, this attitude can lead to isolation of the ecclesial community,” Fr. Khalayim lamented. He said the division there was not driven by “loyalty to the commandments of God, but because of political views.”

The conflict is not a civil war, Fr. Khalayim commented, but a new kind of hybrid war, which blurs the lines between foreign aggression, foreign sponsorship of a civil war, and a genuine domestic revolution.

Fr. Khalayim pointed out that while Russia denies its presence in the conflict zone in Ukraine, Russia also denied its presence in Crimea before bringing in the army to annex the territory. According to Ukraine, he explained, the conflict within the country is coming from their neighboring state.

“It is clear that without the intervention of Russia, there would never be a military conflict.”

This prolonged tension between Ukraine and Russia adds to the complicated history between the two regions. Fr. Khalayim pointed to the history of Russian Tsars Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great and Peter the Great, whom he claims “wanted to exterminate all that was Ukrainian – culture, tradition, language and the Church.” The two nations, he says, are “close, yes, but not brothers.” Given recent actions, he charged, “Russia has shown it does not want to be a sister nation, but a dominant people.”

Despite these challenges facing Ukraine, the Ukrainian people have come together in the face of the conflict. “The pain and suffering have joined the people together, and truly now we can speak of a Ukrainian people,” Fr. Khalayim explained. The uniting of the Ukrainian people has also strengthened the resolve of the Church – all the Churches in Ukraine – to stand against violence and to stand for peace. The Orthodox Churches in Ukraine have made steps to form a union together, and other initiatives to protect human dignity have remained the focus of Christians in Ukraine.

Going forward, Fr. Khalayim suggested, Ukraine must continue to push for freedom and its future.

“Ukraine now has to rise from fear and violence, so that it can be a country of peace and true brotherhood,” he said.

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WORLD NEWS

Only sister to survive Yemen attack: Despite danger, ‘we chose to stay’

by Hannah Brockhaus (CNA/EWTN News) • September 3, 2016

Sister Sally speaks at the Jubilee for Workers of Mercy and Volunteers on Sept. 3, 2016. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — A year before a March 4 attack killed four sisters, the Missionaries of Charity opted not to leave, but to remain with their patients in the war-torn country of Yemen, the sole survivor said on Saturday.

“In the midst of this dangerous situation, our dearest Sr. Prema, MC, general superior, called us from Calcutta and spoke to us individually. She gave us a choice to remain or leave the place,” Sr. Sally shared at an event in St. Peter’s Square Sept. 3.

“All of us had one answer: ‘we choose to stay, to live or die with our poor.’”

On March 4, 2016, the Missionaries of Charity’s care home center in Aden, Yemen was attacked by two gunmen, who killed Sr. Anselm, Sr. Judith, Sr. Marguerite, and Sr. Reginette, along with 16 other victims, including volunteers from Ethiopia and Yemen. Sr. Sally, the convent’s superior, was able to escape.

None of the center’s 60-80 residents were harmed.

Sr. Sally said that even in March 2015, a year before the attack, the situation in Yemen was very dangerous with “shooting and bombing everywhere.”

“We had 64 residents, 14 helpers, 5 sisters, and we had no food. We found ourselves in an utterly helpless situation.”

On the evening of the 30th of March, and in the pitch dark because they had no electricity, the sisters heard a knock on their door. Filled with “fear and anxiety,” they answered it to find that someone had brought them fruits and vegetables. “God works with us in our daily living. We believed it and we experienced it,” Sr. Sally said.

Again, they ran out of food, as well as other basic necessities, such as gas and water. They chopped down nearby trees for firewood. And this time, again, a man showed up at their door with enough fresh bread for everyone. “For 10 days he never failed to bring the bread,” she said.

In the midst of this danger and these difficulties is when the superior general of the Missionaries of Charity, Sr. Prema, gave the sisters the option to leave, but they all chose to remain in Yemen with the poor.

“It is the fruit of our daily prayer,” said the sister: “We implore you, absorb our minds, that we may die through love of you who were graciously pleased to die through love of us.”

Sr. Sally said that the sisters pray daily for the grace to resign themselves to the will of God. She told of another time when the sisters ran out of medicine for their patients. The sister superior knocked at the door of the tabernacle and “told Jesus, ‘You are the master of this house, do something.’” That very afternoon a man brought the medicine they needed.

When they ran out of water, “again the Providence of God: a truck loaded with bottles of water arrived … We were filled to the brim with water and with gratitude to God,” she said.

Sister’s testimony was given as part of a Jubilee for Workers of Mercy and Volunteers in anticipation of the canonization of Mother Teresa, their foundress, Sept. 4. At the end of Sr. Sally’s speech, the Pope presented a catechesis on mercy to those present.

“With our hearts filled with greater love and enthusiasm, we begged God to continue using our nothingness to make the Church present in the world of today, through the mission entrusted to us by our Mother Teresa, even amid dangerous surroundings,” said Sr. Sally.

“With the help of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, cause of our joy, we continue seeking the poorest of poor and bringing them God’s own tender affection, through our humble words of love, little works of peace, given at the cost of our lives.”

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WORLD NEWS

Pakistani Muslim: We should learn from Mother Teresa

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • September 3, 2016

Mother Teresa, circa 1994. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Rome, Italy — As the canonization of Bl. Mother Teresa of Caluctta draws near, the son of a leading Muslim philanthropist in Pakistan praised the nun’s example, recalling how his late father had admired her and believed in learning from her example.

“We should learn from her. Muslims should adopt the concept of missionary spirit. We have been negligent on many levels, not many people are involved in humanitarian mission.”

These are the words of Abdul Sattar Edhi, a Muslim and one of the most well-known philanthropists in Pakistan. Often called the “Mother Teresa of Pakistan,” Edhi passed away July 8 at the age of 88.

On the night he died, the Archdiocese of Karachi organized a prayer vigil in churches throughout the diocese to pray for his intentions. His funeral was attended by swarms of people from different faith backgrounds who wanted to honor him and the many social works he initiated.

Born in the small village of Gujarat, India in 1928, Edhi had to move his family to Pakistan in 1947 when the country was partitioned. It was there that he began his first free medical clinic, which today has turned into a large foundation, the “Edhi Foundation,” that is home to some 5,700 people in 17 residential institutions and which organizes 1,500 ambulances.

The network Edhi founded runs dozens of free hospitals, laboratories, nursing homes, orphanages and rehab centers for drug addicts, and each center contains a cot where children from unwanted pregnancies can be left.

In addition to his social work, Edhi received several international awards. His wife is also engaged in the humanitarian field, and in 2015 received the “International Mother Teresa Prize.” However, despite his awards, Edhi led a simple life and shunned positions of power. After his death, Edhi’s son Faisal took charge of the foundation.

Faisal sent a message for the occasion of Mother Teresa’s Sept. 4 canonization, which was read aloud at a Sept. 2 symposium organized by Asia News.

Mother Teresa, he said, “was a great social worker who dedicated her whole life to the service of humanity without distinction of caste or religion. Her canonization will immortalize her service for the poorest of the poor.”

People like Mother Teresa, he said, help create a good environment that can assist “in ending rivalries between nations and communities.”

Faisal recalled how his father Abdul had frequently spoken of Mother Teresa and her work, saying that Muslims must learn her example and service to others.

He noted how both his father and Mother Teresa lived during the same period, and how both had been criticized in papers by “religious hardliners” who “claimed conversions,” perhaps because “they had no other argument.”

“Only missionary spirit can help them in working for the welfare of others and understanding their sufferings,” he said.

Faisal recalled how his father had always admired the Catholic nuns who ran two centers for the disabled in Karachi, and that Abdul “kept close relations with missionaries and used to send me to there.”

He noted how their family continues to support the centers, and each day sends five kilograms of mutton to Dar ul Sukun, the largest Church-run center for the mentally and physically disabled in Karachi.

On the day of Abdul’s death, Karachi Archbishop Joseph Coutts and a small delegation from the archdiocese came to the Edhi Foundation and prayed in the philanthropist’s room, lighting candles and offering prayers.

Faisal recalled how the archbishop gave him a candle that came from the Vatican, and noted that may priests attended his father’s funeral and prayed for him in their Masses the following Sunday.

“We have people of all faiths in our centers but we never count how many of them are non-Muslims,” he said, explaining that “we respect and treat everybody equally.”

Faisal closed his letter by noting how his father had “trained me to do what Mother Teresa did,” and voiced his hope that he would be able to serve the poor as she did.

“As a Muslim social worker in Pakistan, I thanks Missionaries for their kindness and establishment centers that work without any discrimination in our third world country,” he said, adding that “there is no other example of the ways in which they help the disabled, especially handicapped children.”

He noted that Pakistan is the 6th most populous country in the world, with a population of 201 million people. The state, he said, has failed to provide basic facilities such as public transport, quality healthcare and education.

“Much work needs to be done and we need more people like Mother Teresa.”

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WORLD NEWS

The Honduras Tim Kaine knew

by CNA/EWTN News • September 6, 2016

Tim Kaine at the Jesuit Technical School Loyala in El Progreso, Honduras. (Diario La Prensa/laprensa.hn)

San Pedro Sula, Honduras — He was only 22 years-old, and he was only there for nine months. But U.S. Senator and Democratic vice-presidential hopeful Tim Kaine credits the time he spent with a Jesuit community in Honduras as so formative and influential that it would spark the beginning of his thirty-plus-year political career.

Yet far from an idyllic situtation of youthful self-searching, Kaine encountered a deeply complex and violent political scenario - one that he would later describe as “the turning point” in his life.

Kaine, the former Governor of Virginia and first term Senator, was chosen by Hillary Clinton in July as her running mate for the Democratic Presidential ticket. In Kaine’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, he addressed the convention saying, “I taught kids how to be welders and carpenters.”

Then switching to Spanish he repeating twice, “faith, family and work” and touted his experience in Honduras as one where he “got a firsthand look at a dictatorship. A dictatorship where a few people at the top had all the power and everybody else got left out.”

Born into a Catholic family, Kaine attended the Jesuit prep school Rockhurt High in Kansas City. There he participated in mission drives to fund the Jesuits’ activities in Honduras, visiting the country briefly in 1974 to present the proceeds.

In 2014 he told Rockhurst’s newspaper, Prep News Online, that “I vowed to return one day and was able to take a year off law school in 1980-81 to go back and volunteer with wonderful Missouri province Jesuits and their Spanish and Honduran counterparts, who worked hard everyday to live and preach the Good News among the poor in Yoro Province.”

“What I learned that year from the Jesuits and the comunidad put me on a public service path that has now stretched to 30+ years as a civil rights lawyer, teacher and elected official,” he continued.

According to the Washington Post, Kaine said in 2005: “I made a decision when I came back from Honduras … that I am not going to focus on making as much money as I can make. I am going to focus on doing things where I can serve people.”

In a 2010 interview with CNN, Kaine described his time in Honduras, when he was 22, as “the turning point in my life. I was at Harvard Law School and didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life … The most powerful memory was the great people I met there who convinced me that a life of serving others was the way to be happy.”

And during a November 2014 visit to Honduras, Kaine stated that “I think of El Progreso everyday. The people, aside from my family, are the most important in shaping who I am today.”

El Progreso is the city, located fewer than 20 miles southeast of San Pedo Sula, where Kaine spent nine months volunteering with the Jesuits.

He visited the city again in February 2015, commenting, “El Progreso is extremely special to me. My experience working at Loyola taught me the importance of access to skills-based training – both in Honduras and the U.S. – and inspired me to pursue the issue of expanding career and technical education in the U.S. Senate.”

In a June 7, 2016 interview with C-SPAN, Kaine said that his experience with the Jesuits put him “in a seeker mode where it pushed (him) not to just accept what (he) had been taught” but encouraged him to seek his “own answers.” The Jesuits, he said, were an important part of his transition to adulthood, where he didn’t just accept the answers he was given by what he has described as his devout, Irish Catholic parents.

At the time of Kaine’s 1980-81 volunteer work in Honduras, the country has been ruled by the military for 17 years. He told Prep News Online that “when I lived in Honduras under a military dictatorship that deprived people of even the right to vote, I learned to value what we have and do my little bit to protect and better it.”

In 1980, each of Honduras’ neighbors were gripped in civil wars between right-wing military governments and left-wing revolutionaries: Guatemala’s had started in 1960, and El Salvador’s in 1979. To the south in Nicaragua, the Sandinista National Liberation Front had ousted the Somoza dictatorship in 1979, but fought counterrevolutionaries throughout the 1980s.

The Council on Foreign Relations noted in 2012 that “Honduras did not have a civil war of its own, but nonetheless felt the effects of its neighbors’ conflicts; it served as a staging ground for U.S.-backed Contras, a right-wing rebel group fighting Nicaragua’s Sandinista government during the 1980s.”

Surrounded by “hot” theaters of the Cold War, Honduras “became the stronghold from which the United States attempted to stabilise the region against the forces of Communism,” Nick Harding wrote in The Telegraph in 2014.

“State-sanctioned political repression, disappearances and death squad executions were ubiquitous,” he continued.

As early as 1979, Honduras established Battalion 3-16, an army unit “trained and equipped by the CIA to gather intelligence about subversives,” according to the Baltimore Sun. The publication also found in the course of a 14-month investigation that hundreds of Honduran citizens were kidnapped, tortured and killed by Battalion 3-16 in the 1980s.

Honduras’ military government held a general election in 1981, which was won by the Liberal Party, a center-right group which had not held power since a 1963 military coup d’état.

It was in this context that Kaine arrived in Honduras in 1980.

In a recent article at The Nation, Dr. Greg Grandin (a professor of history at New York University), wrote that in 1980, Honduras “was quickly turning into the crossroads of Cold War.”

“It was into this whirlwind that young Tim Kaine flung himself on his voyage of self-discovery,” Grandin wrote, adding that “None of this, however, comes across in anything Kaine says about his time in Honduras.”

Kaine’s volunteer work with the Jesuits in Honduras has been portrayed as teaching carpentry and welding at the Instituto Tecnico Loyola, which gives vocational training to at-risk youth.

Father Mauricio Gaborit, S.J., whom America Magazine has called a long-distance mentor of Kaine and who met Kaine in 1974 while working in El Progreso, said that during Kaine’s 1980-81 visit the young man would visit villages to recruit students for the technical institute, befriend them, and help them to sell the goods they made. Fr. Gaborit said Kaine also taught English and religion classes.

Father Jack Warner, S.J., an American who lived with Kaine in Honduras and who currently lives in El Progreso, told CNA that Kaine’s work was mostly focused on the Instituto Tecnico Loyola, but that he also helped with the design of the carpentry of a small theater the priest founded.

Dr. Andrés León Araya, a professor of anthroplogy at the University of Costa Rica, has written that the work of the Jesuits in the Aguan valley of northern Honduras “was oriented mainly around organizing and supporting peasant cooperatives.”

“These were all priests influenced by Liberation Theology,” León wrote in his 2015 dissertation for the City University of New York. “They were particularly active in the area of political training, especially through their radio schools – teaching reading and writing as the basis for organization.”

He described the Jesuits as “in the thick of the struggle for land” between farmers and ranchers, but that they “also were usually the first to denounce injustices taking place within the cooperatives (corruption and violence above all).”

León noted the 1975 Horcones massacre as among the events that “shifted the ways in which the Jesuits approached their political work in the communities.”

In June 1975, the bodies of 14 people heading to a hunger march in the capital city Tegucigalpa were found on the Horcones ranch. Among them were two priests, Father Jerome Cypher and Father Iván Betancourt. León wrote that “Perpetrated by members of the Honduran army with the support of local cattle ranchers, the massacre was understood as an attempt by the military government … to stop the increasing militancy and radicalism of the peasant movement,” which was pushing for land reform.

According to León, in the aftermath of the massacre the Honduran bishops instructed parishes “to lay low and fire anyone affiliated with the left-oriented parties,” which “basically meant a retreat from any open political activity.”

This instruction was extremely distasteful to Father James Carney, S.J., an American-born priest who embraced liberation theology and revolution in the 1970s, was exiled from Honduras in 1979 for his increasingly radical activities and promotion of Marxist ideology.

Father Carney wrote in his autobiography that after the Horcones massacre “the Catholic hierarchy, the majority of the priests and also the laymen in Honduras retreated from any social commitment and became nonpolitical and very anticommunist.”

Though he was not present in El Progreso while Kaine was there, Father Carney corresponded with the Jesuits in Honduras, encouraging them in their work. He later re-entered Honduras as a chaplain for a leftist guerrilla unit and was “disappeared”, and likely executed, by the Honduran military, in 1983.

After an interview with Kaine, Jason Horowitz wrote in the New York Times Sept. 2 that though Father Carney was exiled from Honduras during Kaine’s stay, Kaine sought him out “during a short stay in Nicaragua.”

“Mr. Kaine hopped off a bus in northern Nicaragua, walked miles to Father Carney’s remote parish and spent a memorable evening listening to the priest describe ‘both getting pushed around by the military and getting pushed around by the church,’” Horowitz said.

He added that Kaine “embraced” liberation theology, saying he told his pastor in Richmond, Va., “that his exposure to liberation theology had ‘changed him, it deepened him.’”

According to León, the Jesuits’ organization of peasant cooperatives was “thanks to the close relation that existed” between Father Carney and the National Association of Honduran Peasants.

Grandin wrote that the Jesuits were “on the front lines of Central America’s political upheaval. By no means were most Jesuits left wing, but many, perhaps the majority, were at least broadly committed to what was called the ‘social gospel.’”

This was echoed by Horowitz, who said that “most of the American Jesuits Mr. Kaine worked with on a daily basis had a more pragmatic streak and rolled their eyes during philosophical debates about liberation theology.”

According to Grandin, when Kaine stayed in Honduras, the Jesuit mission at El Progreso “was focusing its work on labor issues and the welfare of plantations laborers and their families.”

Grandin interviewed Dr. Jefferson Boyer, an emeritus professor of anthropology at Appalacian State University, about the Jesuits in Honduras. Boyer spent six years in Honduras, earning a doctorate with his 1982 dissertation “Agrarian Capitalism and Peasant Praxis in Southern Honduras” after studying economy and peasant movements in the country.

Grandin relates that Boyer remembered a “split” among the “North Coast Jesuits” of Honduras, along the lines of liberation theology and the election of St. John Paul II as Bishop of Rome.

He wrote that Boyer said “the US Jesuits in Honduras tended to be more conservative, while younger Latin American and European Jesuits ‘consistently held democratic socialist positions,’” though Father Carney was the exception to this rule.

Kaine’s mentor in El Progreso was Father Jarrell “Patricio” Wade, S.J., according to Grandin, who describes the priest as having ethics “more pastoral than political.” He says Boyer called Father Wade a “traditional Jesuit”, and that Father Carney said Father Wade “blamed his political work with peasants for provoking the growing repression against priests.”

Kaine and his wife Anne celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary in November 2004 by visiting El Progreso, where they spent a couple a couple days with Father Wade, according to the Washington Post.

One of the stories Kaine tells about his time with Father Wade – who remained in Honduras until his death in 2014 – is that they visited an impoverished family around Christmas, and the father gave the priest a bag of food as a Christmas gift.

“Kaine said he was shocked and angry that the priest had accepted food from a man whose own children clearly were not getting enough to eat,” Timothy Dwyer wrote in the Washington Post. “For five minutes or more they walked in silence, until the priest turned to Kaine and said: ‘Tim, you know you really have to be humble to accept a gift of food from a family that poor.’”

Kaine told the Post: “That one sentence that Patricio said to me is the thing that I have come back to most often in the last 25 years as I try to figure out what to do and what I ought to be doing.”

In his 2010 interview with CNN, Kaine mentioned, alongside Father Wade, Jim O’Leary, a Jesuit brother, and Father Ramon Peis as “people who at a young – at an early time in my life really put me on a path I still feel like I’m on to try to, you know, be of service to others.”

Father Gaborit told America that Kaine, in reflecting on the situation of the poor, “went the route of optimism. He saw himself … helping people.”

Grandin writes that “According to his own account,” Kaine “provided politically neutral technical training, helping with a program that taught carpentry and welding.”

But he quotes Boyer as saying that “if Tim Kaine was working as a Jesuit volunteer in 1980, he could not have avoided become immersed in these socio-religious, political currents and cross-currents. He would have been exposed to both conservative and generally more left and activist work of his hosts and mentors.”

This view was echoed by Father Warner, who told CNA that Kaine would certainly have had contact with the troubled situation in the region at the time.

“At that time (the violence), the force, affected everyone, because the reality of the situation at that time one simply could not escape, there was no way to look in another direction,” he said.

Father Warner spoke to the New York Times about liberation theology, saying that “the gospel is an extremely communist document” and that St. John Paul II’s crackdown on liberation theology was “one of the reasons we didn’t make too much noise about it.”

And sympathy for Father Carney’s radicalized vision of liberation theology continues today through the work of Father Ismael Moreno Coto, S.J., director of Radio Progreso, who also worked with Kaine during his time in Honduras.

During a September 2015 commemoration of Father Carney’s disappearance, Father Moreno called on those in attendance “to follow his [Father Carney’s] footsteps and memory of struggling to continue to build a more just and equitable society.”

Over the years Father Moreno and Kaine have met both in Washington, D.C. and in El Progreso.

In his most recent visit to Honduras, in 2015, Kaine gave an interview to Radio Progreso, saying, “During my time here I learned many lessons from you, students and their families, Jesuit priests and the Progreso people. The Jesuits inspired me to help people in my life. They are models of values, missionaries who think of others before themselves.”

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In Ghana, a broken bone can mean starvation. This doctor wants to change that

by Kevin Jones (CNA/EWTN News) • September 7, 2016

A boy from Sunyani. (Medicus Christi)

Accra, Ghana — Dr. Joseph Marotta, an orthopedic surgeon from Albany, New York, had always intended to use his medical skills to help people in developing countries. But the final inspiration didn’t come until he was 50 years old.

“I was sitting at Mass one day and there was an Italian missionary who was working in Sudan and Somalia,” Marotta told CNA.

The missionary, he recounted, said: “We need your money, I come to ask for your financial support. But if you think that putting a $20 bill in the collection plate today absolves you of your responsibility to your fellow man who is suffering, you’re wrong.”

Those words prompted Marotta to start the Medicus Christi project. He and his supporters aim to develop an orthopedic surgery center and a medical training center on the grounds of Holy Family Hospital and Nursing School in the village of Berekum in Ghana’s Brong Ahafo region.

Marotta said the project aims “to bring compassionate, modern medical care and medical training to the poor people of the developing world.”

In developed countries, people take for granted the ability to treat accident injuries and broken legs, not to mention arthritic conditions, congenital abnormalities, bone tumors and deformities.

In Ghana, the lack of medical care can be life-threatening.

“Most people are rural, subsistence farmers with a small piece of land. They grow their own food and sell some,” Marotta explained. “If the breadwinner gets hurt and breaks his leg, he’s going to starve. His family is going to starve, because there’s no social services to take care of them.”

“Most surgical care in the developing world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, is almost non-existent. Orthopedic care, in particular, is very, very lacking,” the doctor added. “Ghana, for instance, has about 25 million people. There are about 12 fully trained orthopedic surgeons in the whole country.”

Despite the poverty, the doctor also found inspiration from the country.

“The people of Ghana are extremely warm and welcoming,” he said, noting that the Catholic population in Africa is one of the fastest-growing in the world.

“The Church and the faith in West Africa and in Ghana is tremendously enthusiastic. The joy and the enthusiasm for the faith there is absolutely invigorating,” Marotta said. “They have a lot to offer and a lot to show us here about the joy of the religion, the way that faith can really impact society and benefit people.”

Marotta’s project got a special boost when his Ghanaian pastor introduced him to another clergyman from the country: Cardinal Peter Turkson, who now heads the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

“I couldn’t tell you where Ghana was on the map, six or seven years ago. And yet the Holy Spirit brought us together here,” the doctor recounted.

Four years ago Cardinal Turkson took him to Rome, where he had a private audience with Pope Benedict XVI.

“To be able to kneel before the Holy Father and promise to devote my life to this work of helping the poor in Africa was a very emotional, very special thing,” Marotta said.

Pope Francis also knows of Medicus Christi. Last October, the Papal Foundation made a $50,000 grant to the project.

Cardinal Turkson has become a mentor for the doctor. When Marotta voiced his doubts, frustrations and worries at the project’s progress, the cardinal would encourage him. The cardinal would cite the example of Jesus Christ’s apostles, the “timid souls” who began huddled in a room and fearing for their lives, but relied on the Holy Spirit to change the world.

“He’s really an extraordinary man,” Marotta said of Cardinal Turkson. “He’s a man obviously of tremendous faith and intellect. And yet he is a tremendous pastoral minister.”

Cardinal Turkson is a board member of Medicus Christi, as is Bishop Edward Scharfenberger of Albany. Several Franciscan priests and brothers associated with Siena College in Albany are also assisting with the project. Marotta is an alumnus of the college, which he has served as a doctor for the sports team. He also treated many of the friars.

Marotta said Catholic Church sponsorship for Medicus Christi, especially the cardinal’s involvement, helps protect supplies from being stolen for sale on the black market or for political appropriation. The project’s planned use of the established, trusted Catholic health system in Ghana makes it much more likely to succeed.

Marotta also has ambitions for Medicus Christi to spread medical training throughout Africa.

“We intend to become the center of orthopedic education for the entire continent of Africa, bringing in surgeons and nurses and therapists to our center in Ghana to train them in techniques so they can go back and use these skills for their own people.”

“Right now there is nothing that exists like this in Africa,” he added. “When we are done we will be the largest orthopedic hospital in Africa and the only orthopedic training center of its kind in the developing world.”

Marotta’s project is working with the New York-based Giving to Ghana Foundation, which supports projects in the Diocese of Sunyani. Medicus Christi has raised enough funds to begin groundbreaking on its first phase: an orthopedic surgery and outpatient center addition to the present hospital.

The doctor asked for prayers for the project. He appealed for medical expert volunteers who can spend 2-3 weeks working in Ghana for caregiving and training.

He especially appealed for funds, saying financial support can “do a world of good.”

The Medicus Christi website is at medicuschristi.org.

This article was originally published January 15, 2016.

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Cardinal Nichols reminds Catholics: Prisoners are part of the Church, too

by CNA/EWTN News • September 7, 2016

(RIRF Stock via Shutterstock)

Westminster, England — Urging the Catholic Church to work for prison reform, Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster stressed the need to ensure that parishes can welcome and aid former prisoners seeking to deepen their faith and return to society.

“We have a duty to support them, not segregate them. Without this welcome any redemption they found in prison and any motivation they have to reform will be wasted, along with all that they have to offer,” Cardinal Nichols said to a gathering of prison chaplains Sept. 6 at St. Mary’s University, Twickenham.

“One young prisoner, actually preparing for baptism as a Catholic, gestured to the knife scars and tattoos on his face and neck and poignantly asked his Catholic chaplain, ‘How can I walk through the door of a Church looking like this?’ His words challenge us to ensure that we can confidently say he would be welcomed in our own parish.”

The cardinal praised prison chaplains’ work and their commitment to endure stress and hardship to show compassion to those alienated from society.

“Through your vocation you enrich the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in our society in work that has been given a fresh highlight in this Year of Mercy,” he said.

A recent report from the bishops’ conference of England and Wales found that Catholics in prison are very clear about the importance of chaplains in deepening their faith and helping them take part in Mass.

“They testify that doing so brings them closer to God, helps them to cope during this intensely testing period of their lives, and strengthens their connections with the Catholic community, both inside and outside the prison walls,” the cardinal said. “An overwhelming majority of Catholics in our prisons are very clear that chaplains play a vital role in helping them to deepen understanding of their faith.”

He added that collaboration between Catholic and Muslim prison chaplains is “one of the most inspiring demonstrations of partnership between the faith communities in our land.”

Cardinal Nichols reflected on the role of prisons and prisoners. He said that prisoners have individual responsibility to work for their rehabilitation

The cardinal also reflected on the failings of the prison system and society. Communities have a responsibility to ensure humane conditions in prison. Communities must also help those who have left prison and ensure that they are not stigmatized and rejected in a way that leads them back to crime and gangs.

He recounted the story of a prisoner who had learned to read and write better in prison and was chosen to read at the cardinal’s Advent Mass. Although the prisoner’s improvements had seemed hopeful, after a few months out of prison, he had rejoined his gang and died in “a pointless feud.”

“This tragedy underscored for me that, despite the efforts of all those working in our prisons and the difference that you make in many cases, the challenges to be confronted are many and complex,” he said.

Cardinal Nichols strongly denounced inhumane conditions in prisons.

“We think of ourselves as a civilized society, yet we know that in practice our treatment of prisoners often falls short of acceptable standards,” he said. “The care of prisoners, therefore, is a measure of the maturity of a society.”

He said society must act wisely to ensure that the needs of prisoners are met while insisting that they face the consequences of their criminal acts.

“Depriving someone of their liberty is a legitimate punishment. Yet no one can reasonably claim that the conditions in which we hold many prisoners are acceptable,” he said. While there are examples of well-run prisons in England and Wales, “it is a stain on our society that in the twenty-first century some prisons are still characterized by rubbish, damp, dirt, graffiti, and unhygienic facilities.”

He noted an inspector general’s report that prisoners often must eat their meals in their cell right next to an unscreened toilet.

“There is surely no justification for treating our brothers and sisters with such disregard,” he added. “A society which shows such contempt for a prisoner’s dignity truly undermines that prisoner’s chance of reforming their lives.”

He said the Catholic Church has a “vital part” to play in prison reform, given Jesus Christ’s mandate for Christians to visit and care for the imprisoned in Matthew 25. Among the reforms he advocated were efforts to ban mandatory disclosure of criminal sentences on initial job applications. Critics say the job application process screens out newly released prisoners and ensures many will never find sufficient employment, no matter whether they have reformed and educated themselves in prison.

Other failings in the prison system include the growing number of prisons who suffer harm, including self-inflicted harm, suicide, and murder.

“People in prison have done wrong. In many cases they have caused great suffering. Yet they still have the same dignity as every other man, woman or child,” the cardinal said.

He called for better mental health support and safer staffing levels, describing these as “urgent necessities.”

Any prisoner who returns to crime, or suffers addiction, unemployment or violence upon release, shows that the prison system is not working, the cardinal said.

“The Year of Mercy presents an opportunity and a challenge to re-energize our commitment to all whose lives are touched by prison,” the cardinal said.

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Spanish nun murdered in Haiti

by Port au Prince, Haiti (CNA/EWTN News) • September 7, 2016

(Sarah Marchant via Shutterstock)

Port au Prince, Haiti — As the world turned its focus on Rome for the canonization of Mother Teresa last weekend, another religious sister lost her life while caring for the poor in Haiti.

Sister Isabel Sola Macas, 51, from the Congregation of the Religious of Jesus and Mary, was killed while she was driving on the Port-au-Prince highways Sept. 2. Several unidentified individuals fired on the car in which she was traveling. The motive for the attack is still unknown, but attempted robbery is being considered.

Originally from Barcelona, Sister Isabel had worked in Haiti for at least eight years with the poorest and most disadvantaged. During the time she lived in the country, she survived the terrible earthquake that took place in January 2010 and left more than 200,000 dead.

Following the earthquake, Sister Isabel had worked to help rebuild homes, rendered her services as a nurse, and tried to relieve the suffering of those who had undergone amputations because of the earthquake.

Sister Mónica Joseph, Superior General of the congregation, released a statement saying that all the sisters are “in a state of shock” about the news they have received “with great sadness and pain.” She asked for prayers for Sister Isabel, “for her family and the sisters in Haiti.”

The director of the Pontifical Missionary Works in Spain, Father Anastasio Gil, sent a message of condolence “on behalf of the 13,000 Spanish missionaries spread throughout the world,” joining in “the pain and prayers of Isabel Sola’s family and of the Congregation of the Religious of Jesus and Mary, for the terrible murder of this missionary who was giving her life for the poorest, and which finally culminated in the shedding of her blood.”

Pope Francis asked for prayers for Sister Isabel before praying the Angelus on Sunday, following the canonization of Saint Teresa of Calcutta.

He referenced “those who give themselves in service to their brothers and sisters in difficult and risky contexts. I am especially thinking of so many religious sisters who give their lives without reservations.”

The Holy Father asked for prayers “particularly for the Spanish missionary sister, Sister Isabel, who was murdered two days ago in the capital of Haiti, a very tired country, for which I am asking that such acts of violence cease and that there be greater security for all.”

Francis also asked people to remember “the other sisters who recently have suffered violence in other countries. We do this turning in prayer to the Virgin Mary, Mother and Queen of all saints.”

The Pope then thanked all the participants at the Mass for the canonization of Mother Teresa and entrusted to her protection those performing works of mercy, so that she may “teach them to contemplate and adore every day Jesus crucified, in order to recognize and serve him in the brothers and sisters in need.”

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Mass in sign language? Over 20 Spanish priests celebrate it every week

by Madrid, Spain (CNA/EWTN News) • September 8, 2016

(Champion studio via Shutterstock)

Madrid, Spain — In the Catholic Church, the spoken language is central to the liturgy: we recite the Nicene Creed as one, we praise the Lord with the Gloria that we sing, and we bow our heads to hear the blessing we receive at the end of Mass.

But there’s a different reality for hearing impaired and deaf Catholics around the world.

Father Sergio Buiza, the national director of the Spanish Conference of Catholic Bishops Deaf Ministry, said their goal is to “bring the Gospel to the maximum number of people,” including, of course, the deaf and hearing impaired, Europa news reported.

Fr. Buiza is just one of several priests who celebrates Mass in sign language at one of many Catholic churches in Spain. He celebrates a sign language Mass at the Santiago Cathedral in Bilboa, Spain each week.

There are around a million people in Spain affected by different levels of hearing loss. Some 1,250 of them attend Mass in sign language every week at one of the 24 churches where they are held.

In the parishes where this pastoral care is provided, all types of services are offered: from Mass to catechesis, Bible study groups, wedding celebrations, and confessions.

However, Fr. Buiza explained, the biggest issue is that there is just one parish for the deaf per diocese, forcing those with hearing impairments to travel long distances each week.

“There are elderly people that come from a long way. In my diocese we celebrate the Eucharist in the cathedral every Saturday afternoon and they come from different towns by train and bus,” the priest from Bilbao said.

Last December, the Spanish Catholic Bishops Conference announced a new initiative in collaboration with the ONCE Foundation to help the hearing impaired by installing magnetic induction loops, or hearing loops, in at least 12 churches across Spain.

Hearing loops are sound systems that transform the audio in a magnetic field that is picked up by hearing aids and Cochlear Implant processors. This will allow at least those with such devices to participate more fully in the Mass, but would not be of use to those who are fully deaf.

The Church in Spain has been working with the deaf for more than 50 years and has been doing so in a more coordinated fashion since the 1990s, when Deaf Ministry became part of the Bishops Conference.

In Spain, some 173 people are dedicated to the pastoral care of the deaf, many of whom are deaf or hearing impaired themselves. This includes 140 laypeople and 21 priests.

This article was originally published Jan. 31, 2016.

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After genocide, what’s next for Iraq’s Christians?

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • September 8, 2016

A woman at Sharia Al Haman Hope Refugee Camp in Duhok, Iraq on March 28, 2015. (Daniel Ibanez/CNA)

Washington D.C. — After the United States has declared that genocide is taking place against Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq, what is the next step for genocide victims displaced from their homes?

“Together, we will advocate for the Christian, Yazidi, and other communities in Northern Iraq that they may return to their homes on the Nineveh Plain to be secured there by coalition and successive international forces,” Andrew Doran, senior adviser to the group In Defense of Christians, stated at the Sept. 7 press conference beginning the group’s advocacy convention in Washington, D.C.

The Nineveh Plain is a 1,600 square mile area in northern Iraq that has been home to various ethnic and religious minorities, including Assyrian Christians who have lived there for centuries as one of the earliest Christian communities.

When militants of the Islamic State swept across northern Iraq in 2014, they displaced hundreds of thousands of these minorities from their homes. They killed innocents, raped and enslaved women and young girls, and destroyed churches and shrines.

In March, the State Department declared that the Islamic State had committed genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and Shia Muslims, and had also committed “crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing” against some “Sunni Muslims, Kurds, and other minorities.”

However, advocates insist that declaring genocide is just the beginning of putting back together the shattered society of northern Iraq.

“There has been far too much of a history of sort of declaring something and then everybody packing up their tents and going home,” Katrina Lantos Swett, former chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, stated at the convention press conference.

One of the next steps the U.S. can take now is to help resettle genocide victims in their homes, should they choose to go back. However, what should be the best course of action and how soon must this be done?

The first step would be a safe, secure return for the victims. “The Christians should return to their homes just as quickly as that region is secure,” Doran told CNA.

A coalition of forces, including Iraqi security forces, the Kurdish Peshmerga and local militia, are fighting to eventually retake Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq. That fighting will be long and difficult, Doran acknowledged, but the Nineveh Plain, which lies north and east of the city, would be the first to be abandoned by Islamic State before the city would fall.

There will be refugees from the city already looking to relocate to the plain, he noted.

“In the long term there would need to be coalition and other successive forces to – not substantial numbers, but some numbers – to patrol and keep safe the region around the Nineveh Plain,” he said. The area “will be relatively easy to secure.”

However, then the area needs to be made livable. And it is here where plans need to be laid for the long-term stabilization of the region.

First, the infrastructure would need to be rebuilt since there are whole villages that are “like ghost towns” and houses that have not been occupied for two years, Doran explained. Then there would have to be economic revitalization of the region, with the help of outside investors.

Finally, efforts would have to be made towards “reconciliation” of the various groups in the region – Christians, Sunnis, Yazidis, and Kurds.

In Defense of Christians is hoping for a congressional resolution to support the policy, which would ultimately have to be proposed by the Iraqis themselves.

“We the organizers of this conference are currently advocating for a new congressional resolution that voices U.S. support for the government of Iraq as it moves to create this province,” Robert Nicholson, executive director of the Philos Project, stated at the press conference.

The province would be semi-autonomous and part of a newly-federalized Iraq, where “power and governance” is relegated to the “lowest level,” Nicholson explained.

The idea isn’t new, advocates maintain, as the Iraqi government had planned to create three new provinces in January of 2014, months before Islamic State took over Mosul and the Nineveh Plain.

“The first community that needs to be helped and empowered” is the Assyrian Christians, Nicholson said. They would need “administrative autonomy in their local affairs” and a security force that would be trained and equipped, along with an “international rapid deployment force based in the Nineveh Plain” and legal protections for their culture and language.

They should still have the rights and duties of Iraqi citizens, IDC said, insisting that the area will not be a “ghetto” for minorities. However, if they need a safe zone they must be self-sufficient, and the Nineveh Plain would provide the best opportunity for that.

Would the de-centralization of Iraq lead to further sectarian conflict?

“I think because it wasn’t decentralized, the sectarian conflict is precisely what led to ISIS,” Doran stated.

“In other words, the Sunni populations of Anbar and Nineveh province who felt alienated by the Tehran-dominated central government, those conditions led precisely to many people in the population welcoming ISIS as an alternative to what they regarded to be an oppressive central government.”

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The problem with killing coma patients for their organs

by Kevin J. Jones (CNA/EWTN News) • September 9, 2016

(Sfam photo via Shutterstock)

London, England — There are severe ethical shortcomings in a British doctor’s proposal to help unconscious patients die so their organs can be used for transplants, one critic has said.

“The killing of an innocent human being is always wrong – even when a patient, such as the hypothetical patient discussed here, asks that he be put to death,” Edward Furton, Ph.D., an ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, told CNA.

“Killing patients so that their organs can be used by others is equally bad.”

He suggested the argument showed the weakness of a worldview that sees no inherent value in the human body.

“If one approaches moral questions from the perspective of atheism or agnosticism, and then invokes a utilitarian calculus, the human body only has value as an object of use by others,” said Furton, who is also editor-in-chief of The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly.

Dr. Zoe Fritz, a clinical research fellow at Warwick Medical School and a consultant physician for Cambridge University Hospitals, made a controversial case for involuntary organ donation in an Aug. 31 paper published in the U.K.-based Journal of Medical Ethics.

Fritz used the hypothetical example of a patient in a “persistent vegetative state” who was to have clinically assisted nutrition and hydration withdrawn. She argued that where a patient’s death is “inevitable” and when it is agreed by the courts that life support will be withdrawn, It could be in “the best interest” of an unconscious patient “to have a drug that would stop their heart and to have vital organs donated to a family member, acting as a means to the end of saving another,” the author said.

“‘Best interests’ should include the interests that people have previously expressed in the well-being of others; this extends to altruistic deeds,” said Fritz.

She suggested the hypothetical case of a mother who ran into the road to save her son from an oncoming vehicle, only to be hit by the vehicle and rendered permanently unconscious. Family members or a judge could decide the mother would have wanted her organs donated to save the life of her son, even if it meant being killed by a fatal drug.

“By extension, it could also be in the patients’ best interests to donate their organs to someone else, if that was consistent with their previously expressed wishes,” Fritz said.

Furton challenged the way the argument treated patients.

“Persons in the persistent vegetative state are not dead and are not dying,” he said. “They should not have their food and water taken away. When that is done, the cause of death is not an underlying disease (the persistent vegetative state is not a fatal condition), but the lack of hydration. The cause of death is thus dehydration. This is a type of euthanasia.”

“The author of the article shows no appreciation for the theological dimension of death. Her argument, again, is purely utilitarian,” Furton added.

From the Catholic perspective, he said, “death is the transition to another life.”

“We are free to use palliative drugs to make that passage easier, but we cannot directly kill anyone.”

Furton though the argument was too abstract from practical decision-making.

“True moral reasoning engages the everyday facts of life, and in the case of organ donation, the everyday facts of medical practice,” he continued. “We must reason from the perspective of common sense, not deduce conclusions from bizarre hypotheticals that do not occur in reality.”

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U.S. NEWS

Legal counsel: Religious freedom never justifies abuse

by CNA/EWTN News • September 2, 2016

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Indianapolis, IN — An Indiana woman who allegedly beat her 7-year-old with a coat hanger is citing religious freedom as her defense against felony abuse charges, saying her disciplinary tactics were inspired by her Evangelical Christian faith.

But Kellie Fiedorek, who serves as legal counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, rejected the idea that religious liberty can be used to defend abuse. The U.S. has provisions built into federal law to protect against such misuses of religious freedom claims, she said.

The alleged abuse occurred in February, when Thaing hit her son with a plastic coat hanger hard enough to leave multiple bruises. Two days later, a teacher discovered and reported the abuse when she tried to pat the little boy on the back and he flinched. Doctors counted 36 bruises on the boy, according to reports from the Indy Star.

The woman, 30-year-old Kin Park Thaing, is a refugee from Burma (now known as Myanmar) who was granted political asylum in the U.S. In court documents, she quoted Scripture and cited cultural differences as part of her defense.

Thaing quoted verses from Proverbs in her defense, saying that a parent who “spares the rod, spoils the child” and: “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol.”

Fiedorek told CNA that this is not the first time someone has tried to use religious freedom as a defense for child abuse or domestic abuse.

“First of all child abuse and domestic abuse are crimes, and those who engage in that kind of behavior will be prosecuted,” she said.

“And religious freedom laws have never been successfully used as this woman is attempting; they’ve never been successfully used in justifying child abuse or domestic abuse,” she added.

According to the Indy Star, Marion County Deputy Prosecutor Matt Savage said in an eight-page rebuttal that the beating “(goes) beyond these religious instructions she cites from the Bible.”

The other part of Thaing’s defense has to do with a 2008 decision in the Indiana Supreme Court, which determined that parents are protected in some cases of “reasonable corporal punishment.”

Thaing may be protected because her disciplinary measures, while considered extreme in the United States, would be considered reasonable in Burma.

However, the religious freedom defense is likely to fail, Savage wrote.

U.S. legal tradition has broad allowances for religious liberty, a principle that is enshrined in the First Amendment alongside freedom of speech, press, assembly and petition. But there are limits.

Like many other states and the federal government, Indiana has a Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was signed into law in 2015 by now-Republican vice president nominee Mike Pence. The law says that the government cannot “substantially burden” a person’s religious liberty unless it can prove that it is furthering a compelling state interest and using the least restrictive means of doing so.

James Dwyer, a law professor at William and Mary who studies child welfare and the First Amendment, told The Atlantic that in this case, it is unlikely that Thaing can prove a substantial burden on her religious freedom and that even if she does, the government still has a strong compelling interest in protecting the child.

In the case of child abuse, Fiedorek agreed, the government clearly has a compelling interest in protecting the safety of children.

Religious freedom laws like the one in Indiana are about balance, she added.

At the time it was passed, the Indiana Religious Freedom Act sparked controversy, with some people concerned that it allowed too much license based on religious liberty.

But Fiedorek maintained that despite the criticisms, religious freedom laws do not guarantee a free pass to anyone, they simply allow people to receive a fair hearing in court.

“The reality is that a religious freedom act is not a guaranteed win,” she added. “You can do a defense, you have your day in court, but the judge ultimately decides whether or not the government has a compelling interest to use the least restrictive means to justify burdening that person’s religious beliefs.”

“It’s checks and balances. Religious freedom acts do not pick winners or losers.”

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U.S. NEWS

Abortion linked to mental health problems down the road, study finds

by CNA/EWTN News • September 3, 2016

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Washington D.C. — Abortion during the late teen and early adult years raises a woman’s risk of mental health problems and may be linked to almost one in ten cases of these women’s mental disorders, a new study says.

“Evidence from the United States confirms previous findings from Norway and New Zealand that, unlike other pregnancy outcomes, abortion is consistently associated with a moderate increase in risk of mental health disorders during late adolescence and early adulthood,” said the study’s abstract.

The study, conducted by sociology professor Donald Paul Sullins of The Catholic University of America, was published July 22, 2016 in the peer-reviewed Sage Open Medicine journal.

After adjusting for demographic differences and other factors, the study found that abortion during these years elevated a woman’s risk of mental health disorder by 45 percent.

“One-eleventh of the prevalence of mental disorders examined over the period were attributable to abortion,” the study’s abstract said.

The study sought to examine any links between pregnancy outcomes like birth, abortion or miscarriage and mental health outcomes for U.S. women during the transition to adulthood. It drew on a national study of 8,005 women that surveyed them three times at average ages of 15, 22 and 28.

Involuntary pregnancy loss was associated with a 24 percent elevated risk of mental disorder, while childbirth was “weakly associated” with reduced risk of mental disorder.

Students for Life of America said the study showed the need for better data about the risks of abortion.

“Abortion activists have repeatedly denounced attempts to link abortion with any adverse events,” the group said Aug. 23. “In medical schools across the country, students are taught that there are no long-term consequences of abortion, and that abortion is a safe procedure. However, these statements are misleading at best.”

Students for Life said that each state sets its own reporting laws. States like California do not require any reporting of abortion statistics. Reported statistics may be unreliable, given that pro-abortion research organizations like the Guttmacher Institute consistently report abortion rates as much as 30 percent higher than Centers for Disease Control reports.

Only 16 states require reporting on abortion complications, and only eight publish abortion complications in their public abortion reports. Four states inquire about maternal mortality after abortion, while only one state asks about follow-up care to women who have had abortions.

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U.S. NEWS

Bishops to struggling families: We’re with you

by Matthew Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • September 5, 2016

The American flag. (Kim Hill via Flickr CC BY-ND 2.0)

Washington D.C. — The Church stands with struggling families amidst poverty, unemployment, and opioid abuse in America, said Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami in a Labor Day message from the U.S. bishops.

“These challenging times can pull us toward despair and all the many dangers that come with it,” he said.

“Into this reality, the Church shares a word of hope,” he continued. “She seeks to replace desperation and isolation with human concern and true solidarity, reaffirming the trust in a good and gracious God who knows what we need before we ask him.”

Archbishop Wenski, who chairs the U.S. bishops’ committee on domestic justice and human development, issued the conference’s annual Labor Day statement for 2016. He focused the message on the present-day “twin crises,” problems affecting families and workers.

The two crises are related, he said: poverty and a lack of access to good jobs has harmed the dignity of workers and has stood as an obstacle to family life.

The archbishop pointed to problems of “stagnant wages, industry leaving towns and cities behind, and the sharp decline in the rate of private-sector organized labor” as well as increasing rates of child poverty.

“Middle and rural America” have been hit especially hard with “the departure of industry,” he noted, citing “substance abuse” and “an increase in the number of broken families” as results of this.

“The Rust Belt region now appears to have the highest concentration in the nation of drug-related deaths, including from overdoses of heroin and prescription drugs,” he continued.

Pope Francis is aware of these problems, Archbishop Wenski said, as the Pope noted them in his address to the U.S. Congress last September where he remarked that young people “seem disoriented and aimless, trapped in a hopeless maze of violence, abuse and despair.”

“Their problems are our problems. We cannot avoid them,” the Holy Father said. “We need to face them together, to talk about them and to seek effective solutions rather than getting bogged down in discussions.”

Christians must take these words to heart and practice true solidarity toward their neighbors, the archbishop said.

“The Church weeps with all of these families, with these children, whose homes and worlds are broken,” he said. “For those who feel left behind today, know that the Church wants to walk with you, in the company of the God who formed your ‘inmost being’ and who knows that you are ‘wonderfully made’.”

“The first response” of Christians to these crises, he continued, is to “offer help” to our “neighbors in need.”

“That help may take the form of food, money, counsel, friendship, spiritual support or other forms of love and kindness,” he said. Employers must make sure they are paying their workers “a just wage” and giving them “working conditions that allow for a secure family life.”

Christians must advocate for just wages and dignified working conditions, he stressed. Unions have an essential role here to push for these policies, he insisted, noting that “people of faith and goodwill can be powerful leaven to ensure that these groups, so important in society, continue to keep human dignity at the heart of their efforts.”

The archbishop concluded by referencing a prayer of St. Augustine, noting “the need of all people to rest, and finally to ‘rest in God’.”

“In times of restlessness and discouragement, let us recall the beautiful prayer of St. Augustine, who wrote: ‘You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you’,” he stated.

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U.S. NEWS

Georgetown announces steps to make amends for 1838 slave sale

by Adelaide Mena (CNA/EWTN News) • September 6, 2016

Georgetown University. (Ehpien via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Washington, D.C. — Nearly 200 years after hosting a slave sale on campus in order to pay off school debt, Georgetown University has announced its intention of making amends to the descendants of those impacted by the sale, as well as to the broader community.

Along with the Archdiocese of Washington and the Society of Jesus in the United States, Georgetown will offer a Mass of Reconciliation for the school’s actions.

The university will also give descendants of the slave sale preferential consideration, treating them with the same consideration as the children of faculty, staff and alumni.

Furthermore, the school will create a memorial to the people sold in the sale. It will rename two residence halls – originally named for the Jesuit priests who orchestrated the sale – after Isaac Hawkins, the first man sold in the 1838 sale, and Anne Marie Becraft, a local African American free woman from Washington D.C. who worked to found a school for African American girls and who later became a religious sister with the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore.

“This community participated in the institution of slavery,” said Georgetown University President John DeGioia in a September 1 presentation. “This original evil that shaped the early years of the republic was present here,” he continued. “We have been able to hide from this truth, bury this truth, ignore and deny this truth.”

But now, the president said, the Georgetown community must recognize its past actions and make amends for them. “As a community and as individuals, we cannot do our best work if we refuse to take ownership of such a critical part of our history. We must acknowledge it.”

Reconciliation efforts will be presented “within the framework of the Catholic tradition,” DeGioia stated. “Our moral agency must be channeled to undo this damage.”

The September 1 presentation described the findings of a recent report on Georgetown University’s relationship with slavery and the impact of those actions, along with recommendations for moving forward.

The 104-page report was compiled by a 16-member Working Group, which began its research efforts in September 2015. The group has also compiled a digital archive of historical documents relating to the sale and other slaves owned by the Maryland Province of the Jesuit order, held discussions with the Georgetown community, and reached out to the descendants of slaves sold in the 1838 sale.

The sale of 272 slaves owned by the Maryland Province of Jesuits was organized by two priests, Fr. Thomas Mulledy, SJ, who was head of the Jesuit order in the U.S., and the Fr. William McSherry, SJ, to pay off some of the school’s debts. The slaves were sold for $115,000, which is equivalent to about $3.3 million today. Most of the slaves were sold to owners in Louisiana, where, according to the school’s report, “they labored under dreadful conditions on cotton and sugar plantations.”

The first slave listed on the bill of sale was a 65-year-old man named Isaac Hawkins.

The Vatican placed conditions on the sale, ordering that families not be separated, that the money not be used to pay off the school’s debt, and that the religious practice of the slaves – many of whom were baptized Catholics – be respected.

Fr. Mulledy met none of these conditions, separating families and using their sale to support the school. In addition, investigators had found that slaves on the plantation did not have access to a Catholic church for worship after they reached Louisiana.

While the prominent members of the province were engaged in orchestrating the sale, some Jesuits at the time helped some of the slaves escape during the sale and transfer.

Because of the scandal, Fr. Mulledy ended up resigning from his post as head of the order in the U.S., and was called to Rome to defend his actions to the superior of the Jesuit order or face dismissal. Fr. Mulledy was allowed to remain in the order, and was allowed to return to the United States in 1843, founding the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts upon his return and later serving a second term as the president of Georgetown University.

The report notes that while the sale was one of the best-documented of the time, due to the presence and transfer of sacramental records, many of the slaves were sold again, and their subsequent sales and transfer have made it difficult to find out the conditions that they lived in and the fate of them and some of their descendants.

Regardless of the state of the records, the report reinforced the brutal and dehumanizing reality of slavery in the early United States and explained that Georgetown University, the Jesuit Order, the city of Georgetown and many other early American Catholic figures all benefited directly from the institution of slavery.

The report also stressed the importance of wrestling with the truth of the university’s history, as well as the moral implications of cooperating with the institution of slavery and its long-reaching consequences of structural injustice and racism that persist to this day – both within the Church and within society at large.

“Neither love for Georgetown nor any manner of local contextualization can begin to justify the actions that were taken,” the report reads. “Indeed the early nineteenth-century context included less shameful, even good alternatives that were rejected and moral resources that were neglected.”

“The opposition to the sale, the scandal it caused, and the abrupt resignation of Fr. Mulledy are a few of the indirect indicators of how real the other options for the Maryland province and Georgetown College were in 1838.”

“In the face of such wrongdoing, contrition is imperative, and the goal of reconciliation – the healing of estrangement between people and the restoration of friendship – is indispensable,” the report stressed.

These efforts for reconciliation and contrition are framing Georgetown’s steps going forward, President DeGioia said. “We can be blocked by our past or we can be strengthened by recognition and reconciliation with it,” he told the assembly of students, faculty, staff and descendants of the slaves sold.

The university’s past, he said, should be seen as a “touchstone” as the school moves forward, along with the input from the descendants of people held by the Maryland Jesuits as slaves, to seek reparative justice and to repair the relationships within the Georgetown community.

DeGioia pointed to the example of St. John Paul II in “seeking forgiveness and reconciliation” as one model and resource out of many from the Catholic faith that the school will draw upon in continuing its steps towards reconciliation for its actions.

Georgetown will also engage more deeply with modern issues whose roots are found in the institution of slavery.

While important steps forward, like the Civil Rights Act, have been made, DeGioia said, “we still live with the implications of the original failure to address the evil that framed the founding of our nation” as well as the continued discrimination of Jim Crow.

He pointed to gaps in life expectancy, health disparities, housing discrimination and disproportionate poverty rates affecting African American communities as part of this continued legacy of slavery in the United States.

This continued engagement with social issues and disparities impacting African-American communities is especially important for universities to grapple with, the president said, because of the American university’s role in constructing the idea of race in the United States.

“Scholars of our universities had the effect of justifying the enslavement of our fellow human beings,” DeGioia explained. “And while all of this may have happened two centuries ago, we live with the consequences today.”

Thus, DeGioia stressed, the publication of the report and apology of the school “does not bring an end” to Georgetown’s involvement in the issue but instead is “opening a chapter” of new involvement on issues of race and slavery’s legacy.

“This is a moment we must seize,” he said. “There is an urgency to address this issue now. We will never fulfill the promise of this university, we will never fulfill the promise of this nation, we will never fulfill the promise of each one of us as long as this legacy is unreconciled.”

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U.S. NEWS

Pranks against a Catholic high school crossed the line, parents say

by CNA/EWTN News • September 6, 2016

(David McTavish via Shutterstock)

Scottsdale, AZ — Parents are outraged after religious pranks at a football game in Arizona included vandalism of a statue of Mary and a dancing Jesus on the football field.

A white statue of the Virgin Mary sits on a lit pillar at the entrance of Notre Dame Prep Catholic high school in Scottsdale, Arizona, greeting all who enter the grounds.

Last week, ahead of a Friday night football game with rivals Desert Mountain, vandals placed a mask of Hillary Clinton over Mary’s face, an attached a sex toy lower down on the statue.

“It’s beyond offensive. There’s nothing worse than to desecrate an image of [Mary],” parent Lisa Gregory told a local CBS affiliate.

“It’s probably high school hijinx, but [the vandal] needs to understand that it was bigotry and intolerance. He probably doesn’t realize that,” she added.

The Hillary mask and sex toy were quickly removed, replaced by a vase of flowers at the base of the statue.

But the pranks continued at the football game, when someone dressed as Jesus led the crowds in cheers and danced with someone dressed like the devil.

“Jesus isn’t a mascot. He’s a religious figure,” Gregory said.

Parents say they complained to the security guard, but the prank continued throughout the entirety of the game.

“He was dancing with the devil and mocking what we as Christians consider holy and sacred,” parent Mike Williams said.

The parents said while they don’t blame the kids for the incident, they blame school officials for not stepping in and stopping the pranks. They said they hope the students learn that the pranks were too offensive and crossed a line.

“Kids are young and dumb and make mistakes, but if you can’t pray in a public school, you shouldn’t be able to mock [Jesus] in a public school,” Williams said.

The local news station did not receive comment from school officials over Labor Day weekend.

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What are human-animal chimeras, and why are they problematic?

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • September 6, 2016

(Umberto Salvagnin via Flickr CC BY 2.0)

Washington D.C. — After the National Institutes of Health proposed federal funding of projects to possibly create a human-animal hybrid, Catholic ethicists voiced serious moral and legal concerns.

“For if one cannot tell to what extent, if any, the resulting organism may have human status or characteristics, it will be impossible to determine what one’s moral obligations may be regarding that organism,” Anthony Picarello and Michael Moses, general counsels for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote in Sept. 2 comments to the National Institutes of Health Office of Science Policy.

A month ago, the NIH proposed federally-funded projects to research human/animal chimeras. The projects would involve injecting embryonic stem cells into animal embryos, with “tremendous potential for disease modeling, drug testing, and perhaps eventual organ transplant,” the NIH proposal stated.

However, it recognized “ethical and animal welfare concerns” and put a temporary funding ban on such research. The NIH said it would accept public comments on the proposal through September 6.

Federal funding for new research projects involving embryonic stem cells was stopped under the Bush administration, but re-opened under the Obama administration. President Bush had expressed moral concerns about the destruction of human embryos in the research.

In comments submitted to NIH, the National Catholic Bioethics Center stated that using stem cells of human embryos for research is wrong because “human beings at these vulnerable stages must be safeguarded, not exploited, in both clinical and research settings.”

The Pontifical Academy for Life stated in 2000 that “on the basis of a complete biological analysis, the living human embryo is - from the moment of the union of the gametes - a human subject with a well-defined identity,” and that as “a human individual it has the right to its own life; and therefore every intervention which is not in favor of the embryo is an act which violates that right.”

“Therefore,” the statement added, “the ablation of the inner cell mass (ICM) of the blastocyst, which critically and irremediably damages the human embryo, curtailing its development, is a gravely immoral act and consequently is gravely illicit.”

However, research to create chimeras causes more ethical problems, the USCCB stated, because these will be creatures “whose very existence blurs the line between humanity and animals such as mice and rats.” Thus, the moral obligations towards such a creature – like whether or not it is morally licit to destroy it – could be unclear.

Human-animal chimera research can only be acceptable by using “induced pluripotent stem cells” under certain conditions, the National Catholic Bioethics Center explained.

It must not involve “the replication of major pillars of human identity in the “brain systems” of animals, they stated. Also, it cannot result in the growth of human reproductive cells in animals, and if that occurs, the creature – if it is an animal – “should never be permitted to breed,” they added.

“Research must not involve the production or reproductive use of human gametes or their progenitor lineages – the basic building blocks of human reproduction – within animals,” the statement continued.

“Animals in which such lineages might unintentionally arise should never be permitted to breed, and derivation of any gametic cells or their progenitors from such animals or their corpses for reproductive purposes should be specifically prohibited.”

There are also legal concerns about federally-funded chimera research projects, the USCCB comments stated – namely that it violates existing law.

“The Dickey amendment forbids the use of federal funds to create a human embryo for research purposes, or to support any part of a research project in which a human embryo is destroyed, discarded, or subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that permitted for research involving live children in their mother’s wombs,” the comments stated.

“Forbidding the production of mixed human/animal embryos was exactly what Congress intended by this language. NIH’s proposal is contrary to this provision,” the comments added.

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U.S. NEWS

Phyllis Schlafly remembered as a pro-life inspiration

by CNA/EWTN News • September 7, 2016

Phyllis Schlafly. (Gage Skidmore via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0)

Washington D.C. — The passing of author, commentator and political activist Phyllis Schlafly prompted some pro-life advocates to remember her leadership across decades of political involvement.

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, said Schlafly “inspired millions to the fight against abortion.”

“Phyllis is the reason the Republican Party is a pro-life party,” Hawkins said Sept. 5. “Phyllis will be missed yet her legacy will live on through my generation and in the young women who are fearless in the fight for the lives of the preborn and their mothers on their campuses and in their workplaces and communities.”

Schlafly, a Catholic, passed away at her St. Louis home on Monday at the age of 92.

The Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis said it extended “prayerful condolences” to Schlafly’s family, saying that throughout her life she “displayed an ardent commitment to the teachings and defense of the Catholic faith and for which the Church is grateful.”

“We pray for repose of the soul of Mrs. Schlafly and for peace and consolation for her family during this difficult time,” the archdiocese said Sept. 7.

Schlafly was born in St. Louis on Aug. 15, 1924. She paid her way through college during World War II by working in an ordinance plant and test-firing machine guns, the Washington Post reports. After earning a master’s degree in political science from Radcliffe College in 1945, she worked at the Washington, D.C. organization that would become the American Enterprise Institute, then worked in St. Louis on a congressman’s reelection campaign and as a research director for local banks.

She married Fred Schlafly, a wealthy lawyer, in 1949 and became a volunteer and a political activist in the Republican Party. She is remembered for her role in ensuring that the Republican Party remained conservative on social issues during the 1960s and 70s.

Among her positions was researcher for U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, the anti-communist crusader. She authored or edited 20 books on topics like 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, national defense, and communism. She also attempted several runs for Congress.

Schlafly rose to prominence through her successful mobilization of opposition to the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which appeared likely to be ratified in early 1972.

She charged that the amendment’s strong prohibition of sex discrimination would lead to outcomes such as a constitutional right to abortion, drafting women into the military, mandatory co-ed bathrooms, gay marriage, and ending labor laws that protected women from dangerous workplaces.

The proposed amendment ultimately failed, with Schlafly’s campaign proving a decisive factor, according to analysts.

Her organization went on to become known as the Eagle Forum and played a role in responding to the legalization of abortion across the U.S. in the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.

The political activist often stressed her devotion to being a wife and a mother, and criticized some feminist causes as well as sex education.

Schlafly and her husband in 1958 had founded the anti-communist Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation, named for the famous Hungarian cardinal of the early Cold War era.

Schlafly was a backer of a strong military to counter the Soviet Union and was a leading critic of the U.S. bishops’ draft proposal that questioned U.S. nuclear weapons policy in the early 1980s, a time of global tension.

In March 2016, she drew attention for her endorsement of the controversial Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Her husband passed away in 1993 after 44 years of marriage. She is survived by six children, 16 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

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U.S. NEWS

Was the IUD controversy at a Catholic hospital fake?

by Mary Rezac (CNA/EWTN News) • September 7, 2016

(Sfam photo via Shutterstock)

Chicago, IL — Last month, a Chicago woman with a dislodged intrauterine device claimed she was turned down for removal of the device at a Catholic hospital, because her doctor said the procedure went against Catholic rules on contraception.

Melanie Jones, 28, slipped and fell in her bathroom, dislodging her copper IUD to the point that it needed removal. She visited her doctor at Mercy Medical Group at Dearborn Station, an off-site location of Chicago’s Mercy Hospital and Medical Center.

She claimed her doctor said she could not remove the IUD due to the hospital’s policy of following the U.S. Catholic bishop’s ethical and religious directives for health care. Jones said the doctor also told her that every other hospital in her network followed the same restrictions.

Jones then filed a complaint with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois against the hospital.

However, representative from Mercy Hospital told CNA on Sept. 6 that the woman’s claim “has no merit” and that the doctors at Mercy Hospital offered to remove the woman’s IUD, but Jones declined.

“This claim has no merit. The treatment Ms. Jones received at Mercy was entirely consistent with the standards of high-quality care,” Martin E. Folan, the director of mission and spirituality at Mercy Hospital and Medical Center told CNA in e-mail comments.

“Mrs. Jones described to our clinical team a dislodged or troublesome IUD. When our Mercy physician followed our protocol and offered to remove the IUD, Ms. Jones declined the removal and left the clinic.”

The ACLU has long opposed Catholic hospitals operating according to Catholic teaching. The group continually files claims against Catholic hospitals for following Church teaching in their practices.

In 2015, the ACLU sued Trinity Health Corporations, one of the largest Catholic health care operations in America and of which Mercy Hospital is a member, for their refusal to perform abortions and tubal ligations. The lawsuit was dismissed.

Folan said despite the inaccurate claim, Mercy Hospital remains committed to providing quality care to everyone they serve.

“Our priority at Mercy is the safety and well-being of the people we serve, and we are committed to the high-quality care our ministry has provided for more than 150 years.”

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Father James Martin wins award from dissenting Catholic group

by Kevin J. Jones (CNA/EWTN News) • September 7, 2016

Fr. James Martin. (Kerry Weber via Wikipedia CC 4.0)

Washington D.C. — Media personality and America magazine editor Father James Martin, S.J. will receive an award from a dissenting Catholic group that has been the subject of warnings from the U.S. bishops and the Vatican for confusing Catholic teaching.

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, said Sept. 6 that the award for Fr. Martin recognized his ministry of communication which has “helped to expand the dialogue on LGBT issues in the Catholic Church.”

“Fr. Martin has used his communication skills and channels to allow for an extensive discussion of LGBT issues among Catholics of varying ideologies,” he said, citing the priest’s role as editor-at-large of the Society of Jesus’ America magazine and his presence on social media, including nearly 500,000 Facebook followers.

New Ways Ministry has called for the Catholic Church to recognize same-sex unions as sacramental marriages and has opposed Catholic efforts to defend religious freedom and marriage as a union of one man and one woman.

The group has not gone unchecked by the bishops.

In a February 12, 2010 statement, then-U.S. bishops’ conference president Cardinal Francis George of Chicago said the group’s claim to be Catholic “only confuses the faithful regarding the authentic teaching and ministry of the Church with respect to persons with a homosexual inclination.”

“No one should be misled by the claim that New Ways Ministry provides an authentic interpretation of Catholic teaching and an authentic Catholic pastoral practice,” Cardinal George continued.

“I wish to make it clear that, like other groups that claim to be Catholic but deny central aspects of Church teaching, New Ways Ministry has no approval or recognition from the Catholic Church and that they cannot speak on behalf of the Catholic faithful in the United States.”

The cardinal said the organization has faced “serious questions” about its adherence to Catholic teaching since its founding in 1977. In 1999, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith permanently barred the group’s co-founders, Sr. Jeannine Gramick and Fr. Robert Nugent, from any pastoral work involving homosexual persons due to “errors and ambiguities in their approach.” Cardinal George’s statement also noted the group has criticized efforts to defend marriage in law as a union of one man and one woman.

Fr. Martin will receive New Ways Ministry’s Bridge Building Award and give remarks at an Oct. 30 awards ceremony at a hotel in Pikesville, Maryland.

“I am honored to be considered as someone who tries to builds bridges in our Church today, and as someone who tries to minister to our LGBT brothers and sisters,” Fr. Martin told CNA Sept. 7.

New Ways Ministry is soliciting donations ranging from $50 to $1,000 to have names of supporting individuals or organizations listed in the program booklet for the event.

DeBernardo authored the foreword to a 2013 report from the think tank Political Research Associates that criticized efforts to protect religious freedom.

New Ways Ministry is part of the Equally Blessed Coalition, itself an outspoken critic of Catholicism. The coalition’s funders include billionaire heir Jon Stryker’s Arcus Foundation, which is engaged in a broad effort to limit religious freedom protections and to counter opposition to LGBT activism within Christianity.

In 2014 the Equally Blessed Coalition received a $200,000 Arcus Foundation grant through member organization Dignity USA “to support pro-LGBT faith advocates to influence and counter the narrative of the Catholic Church and its ultra-conservative affiliates.” The grant supported advocacy related to World Youth Day and the Synod on the Family and was intended to “amplify pro-LGBT voices within the Catholic Church,” the foundation’s grant listings and statements said.

A 2016 grant of $250,000 was intended “to support and give voice to the growing majority of Roman Catholics who support full acceptance and equality for LGBT people,” the Arcus Foundation said. The grant was part of its efforts to counter religious exemptions to anti-discrimination law. The foundation cited the Equally Blessed Coalition’s work “to combat the firing of LGBT staff and allies, who support marriage equality, at Catholic institutions.”

The coalition co-funded an October 2012 report with the LGBT activist group Human Rights Campaign that strongly criticized the Knights of Columbus, the U.S. bishops and the Vatican for defending marriage as a union of one man and one woman.

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The dignity of work – a company’s quest for the mentally ill

by Maggie Maslak (CNA/EWTN News) • September 8, 2016

(Unsplash/Catholic News Agency)

Denver, CO — When Bayaud Enterprises was started in 1969 in Denver, Colorado, they had one thing on their mind: employment.

But not just any kind of employment. They wanted to seek out individuals with chronic mental illness and psychiatric disabilities to find them permanent jobs and an independent lifestyle.

Flash forward to 2016, and Bayaud Enterprises has aided over 7,000 individuals with disabilities and other barriers to employment find full-time jobs, housing, and benefit acquisition instead of relying on local boarding and care homes.

“We think there is a real connection between people living independently and working … it provides dignity to the individuals,” executive director of Bayaud Enterprises David Henninger told CNA.

“The neat thing about employment is you really get to see a person blossom,” Henninger said, adding that the impact of finding permanent work for someone with a disability is life-changing.

Henninger has been with Bayaud Enterprises since its founding in 1969, and has been its executive director since 1973.

Although it was originally started as a Colorado-state run program through the Mental Health Institute at Ft. Logan, Bayaud evolved by starting its own program that helped patients after they left mental health centers.

“In a psychiatric hospital setting, you often see people initially at their worst – at the bottom of the barrel in terms of where they are,” Henninger said.

“As part of their recovery from a mental illness, the impact of work is really huge, in terms of ego and self-worth,” he said.

Bayaud Enterprises created a diverse work program that includes subcontracted work from the local business community. They hold ten different federal contracts in the state of Colorado and work with organizations such as the National Institute for Standards and Technology, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and local hospitals and hotels.

In addition, they own a secure document shredding business with over 5,000 customers across the front range. Instead of sending the shredded paper to a landfill, Bayaud Document Services compounds the paper into bales and sends it to recycling.

With such a diverse range in businesses, Bayaud is able to place every individual seeking work at the appropriate level of employment. Henninger noted that Bayaud has aided individuals with “all sorts of ability,” from people with higher education degrees to people who have been diagnosed with aspergers.

“We outplace about 400 people a year into competitive jobs that aren’t related to Bayaud – and success stories there abound,” Henninger stated.

Henninger recalled one man in particular who came to Bayaud without permanent housing. He was placed as an administrative assistant in a small insurance company and worked there for several years.

“The owner of the insurance firm really liked him … when the owner decided to retire, he actually turned the business over to this individual and that individual is now running a small insurance company and has hired his own employees,” Henninger noted.

Bayaud Enterprises continues to serve over 1,200 individuals in Colorado every year through their employment services and benefit acquisition services. By offering resource navigation, they are also able to help individuals secure additional benefits such as social security, disability, medicaid, food supplement services, housing, and transportation.

“When people approach Bayaud, they are unemployed. So, people are finding some differences in their own personal lives that are significant,” Henninger stated.

Bayaud Enterprises is also focused on remaining community-centric by being involved in local community and emphasizing permanent employment and housing. They have cultivated relationships with local homeless shelters, such as the Samaritan House, by placing homeless residents in long-term jobs.

Their program also boosts local economy by generating annual payrolls of about $5 million every year.

“Our longevity of 10+ years of all of our staff says that they believe in our mission of providing hope and opportunity and choice … we do make a difference and we see it,” Henninger continued.

“Really, these jobs become transformational.”

This article was originally published Feb. 23, 2016.

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Watch EWTN? Bring the family to Alabama to meet everyone

by CNA/EWTN News • September 8, 2016

Mother Angelica. (CNA/EWTN News)

Birmingham, AL — The life and legacy of Mother Angelica will be the focus of EWTN Global Catholic Network’s family celebration in Birmingham Sept. 17-18.

“This year’s EWTN Family Celebration is our first since the death of Mother Angelica and provides us with an opportunity to celebrate and reflect on the extraordinary life of Mother and what she meant to her EWTN family and to the world,” said EWTN chairman Michael P. Warsaw.

The free event will take place at the Birmingham Jefferson Convention Complex.

On Saturday evening there will be a recording of EWTN’s “Family Talk Live” with Fr. Joseph Mary Wolfe and Warsaw.

“We will share our memories, and answer audience questions about the nun whose faithfulness to God left a legacy of which all of us can be proud,” Warsaw said.

Other speakers include EWTN personalities such as Raymond Arroyo, lead anchor of “The World Over”; Johnnette Benkovic, host of “Women of Grace”; Jim and Joy Pinto, hosts of “At Home with Jim and Joy”; EWTN regular guest and producer Father Wade L. J. Menezes, C.P.M.; and Chris Stefanick, host of “Real Life Catholic.”

Doug Keck, EWTN president, will also speak.

Mass will be celebrated on Saturday at 10 a.m. with the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word.

Sunday Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. by Bishop Robert Baker of Birmingham and the Franciscan missionaries.

Attendees can meet with EWTN hosts and the Franciscan friars. There will be a special opportunity for children to visit EWTN’s Faith Factory with Rob Evans (the Donut Man) and Brother Leo.

Other featured events include a “Meet the Author” session with EWTN authors near the EWTN Religious Catalogue Shop.

There will be opportunities for confession and Eucharistic Adoration throughout the weekend.

EWTN’s founder, Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation, passed away on Easter Sunday this year at the age of 92.

The Family Celebration website is at ewtn.com/familycelebration

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After years of service, Courage director takes on new assignment

by CNA/EWTN News • September 8, 2016

Fr. Paul Check. (Andreas Dueren/CNA)

Norwalk, CT — After 14 years of serving the Church’s apostolate for men and women with same-sex attraction, Fr. Paul Check will step down from his current position as Executive Director in order to take up his new position as rector of the seminary in his diocese.

“I will leave my current role with a measure of both peace and sadness,” Fr. Check wrote in an announcement. “I am peaceful because I trust in my Bishop’s decision, and I am grateful for and humbled by the confidence that he has placed in me.”

“At the same time, however, I will be sad to leave what is such a unique and vital apostolate in the life of the Church today - ‘a light that shines in the darkness’ - and one that offers hope to many. Pope Benedict once wrote that Jesus is both logos and agape. I believe the Courage/EnCourage ministry reflects that twofold character of Christ in its clarity and charity, even as it remains a ‘sign of contradiction’ to the world, all in fidelity to the Master.”

Courage, founded in 1980, aims to help Catholics with same-sex attraction in their spiritual growth, including life in chastity. Its partner organization EnCourage is an apostolate for parents, friends, and family members of those with same-sex attraction.

Fr. Check has been involved with both organizations for 14 years, serving as Executive Director of both groups for almost nine years. He will be transferring to his new position as rector of St. John Fisher seminary by December 31, having received the appointment from Bishop Frank Caggiano of the Diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

In his announcement, Fr. Check called his time with the apostolate a “tremendous blessing, in particular by deepening my understanding of the tangle and the nobility of the human heart, and of my appreciation for the beauty and efficacy of grace.”

“My work with the members of Courage and EnCourage has changed my priesthood, and I will always be edified by your example. As our beloved Fr. John Harvey, OSFS, of happy memory, liked to say, ‘Our members are our best ambassadors.’ Your voice and experience deserve a wider audience, for the good of many souls.”

He said he also believes the apostolate has prepared him well for his new assignment at the seminary, and that he plans to share what he’s learned through his involvement with the ministry with the students under his charge.

Courage has not yet announced who will succeed Fr. Check as Executive Director.

Fr. Paul Scalia, the Chairman of the Board of Directors for Courage International, expressed “tremendous thanks” to Fr. Check for his service to the apostolate in a statement. He also asked for prayers for both Fr. Check and the organization during this time of transition.

“One sign of a health in any organization is the capacity to make a transition in leadership. Courage International is blessed with an exceptionally dedicated staff who is working tirelessly to be sure this transition happens smoothly,” Fr. Scalia said.

“The Courage apostolate already experienced one such transition when Father Check succeeded Father Harvey. We are being asked again to trust in the providence of our loving Father — that, as He has never left Courage without strong leadership, so now He is already at work for our good. Indeed, I am very grateful for the leadership of the episcopal board and pleased with the plans in place to announce Father Check’s successor soon.”

Fr. Check plans to remain involved with the apostolate as a member of the board of directors, and that he hopes to continue attending the annual Courage conference for years to come. He said he has great faith and hope in the current members of the apostolate, that they will carry the ministry forward.

“Please be sure of my sincere gratitude for your friendship in the Lord and your prayers.”

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L.A. gathering puts Catholic liturgy at the heart of the new evangelization

by Kevin J. Jones (CNA/EWTN News) • September 8, 2016

(Thoom via Shutterstock)

Los Angeles, CA — Catholics can learn a lot about evangelization from the liturgy, say organizers of an upcoming conference in Los Angeles

“This year in particular, we are looking at the relationship of the liturgy and the New Evangelization and discussing the ways in which liturgy is at the heart of the effort to re-evangelize Catholics who have fallen out of the practice of their faith,” Dr. Anthony Lilles, conference coordinator for the Society for Catholic Liturgy, told CNA.

“We live at a time when too many of us sacrifice at the altar of productivity – we worship the works of our hands,” he continued. “The liturgy of the Catholic Church teaches us to surrender the works of our hands to the worship of God and the care of our neighbors.”

The Society for Catholic Liturgy’s 2016 conference, called “The Liturgy and the New Evangelization”, will be held Sept. 29-Oct. 1 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and the University of Southern California Caruso Catholic Center. In addition to organizing an annual conference, the group publishes Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal triannually.

Lilles, who is academic dean at the Los Angeles archdiocese’s Saint John’s Seminary in Camarillo, noted that the Second Vatican Council described the liturgy as “the source and summit of our whole Christian life.”

The conference’s papers and presentations are intended to “promote dialogue and direction for the Church,” organizers said, and speakers will make presentations in both English and Spanish.

Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles will celebrate a liturgy at the cathedral the first day of the conference and then address the opening banquet.

“Archbishop Gomez in particular will explore the importance of popular piety as a portal through which the lay faithful can rediscover the joy of the Church and, thus, the mystery of the Mass,” Lilles explained.

Bishop Elias Zaidan of the Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon of Los Angles will celebrate the Maronite liturgy at the cathedral on Friday morning and deliver the conference’s keynote speech.

Lilles noted the “unfolding crisis of religious persecution” that faces Christians in the Middle East.

“Bishop Zaidan will offer some reflections on their plight and the essential role that the Maronite liturgy has served in sustaining the faith of the Church persecuted,” he said.

The Friday night banquet will conclude with a showing of Lannette Turicchi’s documentary “Pope John Paul II: Prophet for our Time.”

On Oct. 1, Father James Fryar, F.S.S.P., will offer Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.

The conference will feature 12 academic papers and six pastoral presentations.

The conference’s Spanish track includes presentations from the Colorado-based priest Fr. Daniel Cardo about the Eucharist and the Eucharistic Rites in the New Evangelization.

Msgr. Andrew Wadsworth, executive director of the secretariat of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, will present on the topic “The Rites of Christian Initiation and the Baptized but Uncatechized.”

Father Andrew Menke, associate director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship, will review the U.S. bishops’ current liturgical projects.

Other topics include architecture, marriage, and the renewal of liturgical catechesis.

“Liturgy, the public act of worshipping God, is the supreme activity of humanity, the most defining characteristic of living life to the full,” said Lilles. “We were created for a blessed happy life and every liturgy anticipates this ultimate meaning of our existence.”

The conference website is liturgysociety.org/conference.

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Marijuana scores badly in a new, ‘entirely predictable’ report

by Mary Rezac (CNA/EWTN News) • September 9, 2016

(Pe3k via Shutterstock)

Denver, CO — A newly released report shows that traffic deaths, crime, emergency room visits and youth usage of marijuana have significantly increased in the two years since the legalization of recreational pot in the state of Colorado.

Released by the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, the report compared marijuana-related statistics from previous years in Colorado to data from 2013-2015, the years after the legalization of recreational marijuana in the state in November 2012.

The results aren’t promising.

Marijuana-related traffic deaths increased by 62 percent in 2013, the first year of legalization of recreational marijuana. About one in five more youth are now reporting having used marijuana in the past month since its legalization. Marijuana-related hospitalizations in the state nearly doubled from 6,305 in 2011 to 11,439 in 2014.

“Perhaps there is not much value in saying to my beloved state of Colorado that ‘I told you so,’ but these results were entirely predictable,” said Dr. E. Christian Brugger, professor of Moral Theology at Denver’s St. John Vianney Theological Seminary.

Dr. Brugger has spoken and written about the moral questions surrounding the legalization of marijuana several times over the years, as his home state of Colorado has been central to the debate over the drug that has now spread to many other states.

“If there had been any sincere effort on the part of Colorado citizens and legislators to gauge in advance the harms that would arise from legalization, they would have foreseen precisely (these results),” he told CNA in e-mail comments.

The biggest health concern for young people using marijuana is its harmful effect on the brain, which continues its development well into a person’s 20s.

The main active ingredient in marijuana, THC, binds to receptors in the brain and can cause a significant decrease in IQ over time. A 2012 study published in the National Academy of Sciences found that adolescent exposure to marijuana can lead to an 8-point drop in IQ, on par with the drop seen in children exposed to lead.

Another concerning impact is the relationship between adolescent marijuana use and schizophrenia. A study repeated by multiple research groups has found that adolescent marijuana use can quadruple a teen’s risk of developing schizophrenia.

Marijuana can also be addictive, with one in six adolescent users developing a dependence over time.

A secondary health concern is traffic accidents, which make up the leading cause of death in 15-20 year-olds.

According to the report, in 2009, marijuana-related traffic deaths involving operators testing positive for marijuana represented 10 percent of all traffic fatalities in Colorado. By 2015, that number doubled to 21 percent. The amount of youth reporting marijuana use after legalization, compared to before, increased by about 20 percent. College-age Coloradans now rank first in the nation for marijuana use.

Crime has also increased in Denver and Colorado as a whole in the post-legalization years.

“Since 2014, there has been a notable increase in organized networks of sophisticated residential grows in Colorado that are orchestrated and operated by drug trafficking organizations. These organizations currently operate hundreds of large?scale home grows throughout Colorado. Harvested marijuana is shipped or transported out of Colorado to markets in the Midwest and East Coast. Home grows have significantly increased illicit production of marijuana in Colorado,” the report states.

And while marijuana has often been touted as an economy booster, the report shows that Colorado may be losing business from conventions that are no longer hosted in the state due to concerns about marijuana.

According to the report, 49 percent of meeting planners expressed concerns about marijuana when considering holding an event in Denver. VISIT DENVER, the marketing organization for the city, found that Denver’s reputation as a clean and safe city where organizations can host events and conventions has decreased since the legalization of marijuana.

“The legalization initiative was never based upon a rational assessment of whether legalization would be good for our communities, it was driven by money and rotten politics,” Dr. Brugger said.

“And mark my word, those numbers will go up, not down, in the next years.” What’s the solution? “Re-criminalization of the possession and smoking of marijuana in Colorado,” he says.

Tom Gorman, Director of Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, which released the report, also believes that the negative impact will only increase overtime.

“Any time you legalize a substance, you’re going to have more people using. The more people you have using, the more adverse (effects) you’re going to have on society, as well as the individual,” he told CNA.

“Alcohol is a perfect example of that, because so many people use and abuse alcohol. We almost have as many people addicted to alcohol as all the illegal drugs combined. We can expect the same thing from marijuana, although with alcohol you don’t necessarily drink and get drunk. With marijuana, you smoke to get (high).”

The report is also a good reference point for other states considering legalization of marijuana. Until now, there hasn’t been enough data available.

“Basically what it does is give you a look at actual data versus rhetoric.”

“If you look at it overall and you look at the trends, which are all negative, whether it’s emergency room visits or hospitalization or fatalities or drug use among our kids, the other states now have some data to make an informed decision.”

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From inspiration to adoption: A story of working with Mother Teresa

by CNA/EWTN News • September 5, 2016

Mother Teresa. (Funky Tee via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0)

Rome, Italy — More than 20 years ago, Ann Pollak traveled to Calcutta, hoping to volunteer alongside Mother Teresa. The experience would spark a years-long process that would eventually lead her to adopt a severely handicapped child from one of the care centers run by the Missionaries of Charity.

“It has not been easy, at all, but the blessings have far, far outweighed the sacrifices,” Pollak told CNA. “Oddly, in adopting a blind child, I began seeing the world through my own eyes from a different perspective.”

Nearly 16 years ago, Pollak adopted a child from one of Mother Teresa’s orphanages. But adoption was not initially her intent.

In 1995, Pollak travelled to India in order to meet Mother Teresa. She spent two weeks doing volunteer work and was impressed with Mother Teresa’s constant smile, and the fact that despite winning a Nobel Prize and being globally famous, the religious sister was very approachable.

Pollak would return to do volunteer work numerous times in the years that followed. In 1997, about a month before Mother Teresa’s death, she was working with handicapped children. She was assigned to feed one little girl, Rekha, who was blind, autistic and mentally retarded.

“She had the sweetest smile on her face,” Pollak recalled of Rekha. “I just fell in love with her.” She also believed that the child had potential to develop and grow, if she was able to get the proper care and attention from a family.

A year later, Pollak returned to India to see if the little girl was still there. She was.

Pollak said that she wanted to find the young girl a family, or at least a school, somewhere that would be able to offer the proper care for someone with her particular needs.

But as time went on, she became frustrated with her inability to find anyone to care for the girl. She began praying every day, asking God for a solution. Although she had not previously considered adoption, she began to feel an inner call to adopt Rekha.

“I couldn’t find any other solution,” she reflected.

It took almost a year to prepare and get everything in order. Numerous complications arose. Pollak recalled praying what Mother Teresa had termed her “Little Novena” – a series of 9 Memorare prayers offered consecutively.

Within days, the complications had been resolved and the adoption process was complete. “I attribute that to the intercession of Mother Teresa and also the Blessed Virgin Mary,” Pollak said.

Rekha was seven-and-a-half years old at the time of her adoption. Now, she is 23.

Pollak said that her daughter has come a long way. While some of her conditions can never be cured – for example, she was born without eyes, and therefore has no chance of ever being able to see – there are other areas in which she has developed significantly.

Despite autism and mental retardation, Rekha was able to start speaking at age 15. Once she started speaking, she began picking up more and more words, and now has a basic vocabulary.

But the transition was not easy. For years after she was taken away from India, Rehka had frequent, violent fits.

“During these fits, she would bite herself, rip off her clothes, throw herself on the floor … and she also physically hurt me,” Pollak said, recalling times that her daughter would bite her or tear out her hair.

Pollak believes that these fits were caused by Rekha’s inability to communicate her needs, combined with insecurity at being transported to a new and unknown life, as well as hormonal changes as she went through puberty.

Thanks to medication and a great deal of devotion and time, Pollak said that “Rekha is today a much calmer individual - the fits still occur but they are much less intense and much less frequent.”

“Rekha has helped me to become a more patient person!” she added.

Many of Pollak’s friends and family were not initially supportive, with some of them believing that she was making a serious mistake. A dear friend told her that she was ruining her life.

Her younger sister was married to an adoptee and was sympathetic and supportive, she recalled. But her older sister made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with the adoption, including assuming any responsibility if anything were to happen Pollak.

But over time, Pollak said she seen how her daughter has brought out the best in humanity.

“Over the almost 16 years that she’s been with me, I have witnessed the graciousness, kindness and love of other human beings, from people whom we’ve met maybe only on a bus ride to people who have become a part of our life,” she said, pointing specifically to the caregivers they had worked with over the years.

“People frequently stare at us in public because we are sort of an ‘odd couple’ and because Rekha is often very boisterous, but those stares are so often accompanied by smiles.”

On Sept. 4, Pollak and Rehka were both able to attend Mother Teresa’s canonization, an opportunity that Pollak considers incredibly special.

“Today, I believe that my mission to meet Mother Teresa indirectly led me to Rekha,” she said, reflecting on her own journey to adoption. While there were many factors in her decision, which unfolded over several years, she said that watching the saint’s work more than 20 years ago was part of the inspiration that led to her become more deeply involved in the life of the girl she would go on to adopt.

“Seeing Mother Teresa’s work in Calcutta and in other places in the word has a strong impact, and can turn a casual observer into a protagonist,” she said.

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Why Catholics are leaving the faith by age 10 – and what parents can do about it

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • September 5, 2016

(Catholic News Agency/Public domain)

Washington, D.C. — Young Catholics are leaving the faith at an early age – sometimes before the age of 10 – and their reasons are deeper than being “bored at Mass,” the author of a new report claims.

“Those that are leaving for no religion – and a pretty big component of them saying they are atheist or agnostic – it turns out that when you probe a bit more deeply and you allow them to talk in their own words, that they are bringing up things that are related to science and a need for evidence and a need for proof,” said Dr. Mark Gray, a senior research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

“It’s almost a crisis in faith,” he told CNA. “In the whole concept of faith, this is a generation that is struggling with faith in ways that we haven’t seen in previous generations.”

Gray recently published the results of two national studies by CARA – which conducts social science research about the Church — in the publication Our Sunday Visitor. One of the surveys was of those who were raised Catholic but no longer identified as Catholic, ages 15 to 25. The second survey was of self-identified Catholics age 18 and over.

In exploring why young Catholics were choosing to leave the faith, he noted “an emerging profile” of youth who say they find the faith “incompatible with what they are learning in high school or at the university level.” In a perceived battle between the Catholic Church and science, the Church is losing.

And it is losing Catholics at a young age. “The interviews with youth and young adults who had left the Catholic Faith revealed that the typical age for this decision to leave was made at 13,” Gray wrote. “Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed, 63 percent, said they stopped being Catholic between the ages of 10 and 17. Another 23 percent say they left the Faith before the age of 10.”

Of those who had left the faith, “only 13 percent said they were ever likely to return to the Catholic Church,” Gray wrote. And “absent any big changes in their life,” he said to CNA, they “are probably not coming back.”

The most common reason given for leaving the Catholic faith, by one in five respondents, was they stopped believing in God or religion. This was evidence of a “desire among some of them for proof, for evidence of what they’re learning about their religion and about God,” Gray said.

It’s a trend in the popular culture to see atheism as “smart” and the faith as “a fairy tale,” he said.

“And I think the Church needs to come to terms with this as an issue of popular culture,” he continued. “I think the Church perhaps needs to better address its history and its relationship to science.”

One reason for this might be the compartmentalization of faith and education, where youth may go to Mass once a week but spend the rest of their week learning how the faith is “dumb,” he noted.

In contrast, if students are taught evolution and the Big Bang theory at the same school where they learn religion, and they are taught by people with religious convictions, then “you’re kind of shown that there’s not conflicts between those, and you understand the Church and Church history and its relationship to science,” he said.

With previous generations who learned about both faith and science as part of a curriculum, that education “helped them a lot in dealing with these bigger questions,” he explained, “and not seeing conflict between religion and science.”

Fr. Matthew Schneider, LC, who worked in youth ministry for four years, emphasized that faith and science must be presented to young people in harmony with each other.

A challenge, he explained, is teaching how “faith and science relate” through philosophy and theology. While science deals only with “what is observable and measurable,” he said, “the world needs something non-physical as its origin, and that’s how to understand God along with science.”

“It was the Christian faith that was the birthplace of science,” he continued. “There’s not a contradiction” between faith and science, “but it’s understanding each one in their own realms.”

How can parents raise their children to stay in the faith? Fr. Schneider cited research by Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, who concluded that a combination of three factors produces an 80 percent retention rate among young Catholics.

If they have a “weekly activity” like catechesis, Bible study or youth group; if they have adults at the parish who are not their parents and who they can talk to about the faith; and if they have “deep spiritual experiences,” they have a much higher likelihood of remaining Catholic, Fr. Schneider said.

More parents need to be aware of their children’s’ beliefs, Dr. Gray noted, as many parents don’t even know that their children may not profess to be Catholic.

The Church is “very open” to science, he emphasized, noting the affiliation of non-Catholic scientists with the Pontifical Academy of Science, including physicist Stephen Hawking.

There is “no real conflict” between faith and science, Gray said.

“The Church has been steadily balancing matters of faith and reason since St. Augustine’s work in the fifth century,” he wrote.

“Yet, the Church has a chance to keep more of the young Catholics being baptized now if it can do more to correct the historical myths about the Church in regards to science,” he added, “and continue to highlight its support for the sciences, which were, for the most part, an initial product of the work done in Catholic universities hundreds of years ago.”

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You don’t have to be religious to be opposed to porn

by Mary Rezac (CNA/EWTN News) • September 7, 2016

(Perfectlab via Shutterstock)

Denver, CO — It used to be that the only people speaking out against pornography were those who opposed it because of its moral depravity - namely, people of faith.

Apart from that, pornography was considered a normal, if even healthy part of everyday life.

But as the smartphone boom made the internet - and therefore pornography - available at most everyone’s fingertips, secular groups and individuals are increasingly speaking out against pornography’s harmful and addictive properties.

Just last week, former 15-time Playboy cover model Pamela Anderson co-authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, declaring pornography a “public hazard of unprecedented seriousness” following the latest sexting scandal of former Congressman Anthony Weiner.

Whether or not Weiner is in fact a pornography addict is not known to the public, but Anderson is not the first celebrity to use her platform to speak out against the problem of pornography.

British comedian Russel Brand, actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Rashida Jones, and former NFL player and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” actor Terry Crews are just some of the celebrities that have recently spoken out against pornography, its addictive properties and its harmful effects on relationships.

Earlier this year, the GOP at the Republican National Convention declared pornography a public health crisis as part of their platform, a few months after the state of Utah declared the same.

While the debate over what exactly constitutes a public health crisis continues, research already shows the staggering increase in pornography viewing, as well as many harmful effects of pornography use including decreased gray matter in the brain, having more sexual partners and the perpetuation of rape myths, such as the belief that most rape accusations are false. Pornography can also contribute to increasingly violent sexual behaviors, and a decrease in virility, causes for alarm regardless of one’s faith.

In April, TIME Magazine’s Belinda Luscombe published an extensive piece entitled “Porn and the Threat to Virility” including interviews with many young men who blamed their inability to be aroused by real women on their addictions to pornography, a piece that made waves across the internet for weeks afterwards.

In the piece, Luscombe wrote:

“A growing number of young men are convinced that their [physical, in-person] sexual responses have been sabotaged because their brains were virtually marinated in porn when they were adolescents. Their generation has consumed explicit content in quantities and varieties never before possible, on devices designed to deliver content swiftly and privately, all at an age when their brains were more plastic – more prone to permanent change – than in later life. These young men feel like unwitting guinea pigs in a largely unmonitored decade-long experiment in sexual conditioning. The results of the experiment, they claim, are literally a downer.”

“So they’re beginning to push back, creating online community groups, smartphone apps and educational videos to help men quit porn. They have started blogs and podcasts and take all the public-speaking gigs they can get. Porn has always faced criticism among the faithful and the feminist. But now, for the first time, some of the most strident alarms are coming from the same demographic as its most enthusiastic customers,” she added.

Included in those online community groups are Fight the New Drug and NoFap, two non-faith-based websites committed to providing resources for people who want to be rid of their addictions to pornography.

NoFap, featured in Luscombe’s article and recently in an interview with NPR, describes itself as a “comprehensive community-based porn recovery website. We offer all the tools our users need to connect with a supportive community of individuals determined to quit porn use and free themselves from compulsive sexual behaviors.”

The NoFap website is intentionally secular, with the notion that pornography addiction afflicts people of any or no faith, and that recovery should be available to all. It offers its users help through a process called “rebooting”, which helps users restore the neural pathways of their brain, which research has shown can be changed through constant pornography viewing.

Fight the New Drug (FTND), so named because of porn’s addictive properties, is another secular movement that aims to raise awareness of pornography’s effects on the brain, the heart (relationships), and ultimately on the world.

In a previous interview with CNA last year, FTND’s Clay Olsen said that sometimes it takes awhile for society’s views to catch up to the science that’s already out there.

“We’re very excited to see some of this progress and some of these mainstream media outlets kind of following suit and starting to talk about the negative impacts, we couldn’t be more excited about it, but we still have a long way ahead of us.”

“Science has caught up with the fact that pornography’s harmful,” Olsen said, “but society is still catching up.”

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FEATURES

Proud of employment, willingly I go

by Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J. • September 7, 2016

We have just celebrated the last civic holiday of the summer. On Labor Day, we reflect on our role as co-workers in God’s vineyard and, with our talents, continue the activity of God our Creator. Work deepens the truth that we are all made in God’s image and likeness. Mr. Shakespeare has a word to send us off: “Proud of employment, willingly I go.”

The Church’s special care and concern of the worker began in earnest with Leo XIII’s encyclical, Rerum Novarum (1891) when it treated the theme of work. Included in the encyclical was the defense of workers and, in particular, their exploitation. Since then, every pontiff has integrated Catholic social thought concerning workers as part of the Church’s teaching. Politicians of all religious stripes have quoted from their writings as part of their own social platforms. According to Ronald Reagan, “the best social program is a job.”

Bearing Fruit

Work is one way men and women discover their dignity because the building up of the culture is the fruit of labor.

The Psalmist uses the image of a garden to describe the just ones who labor in it. They are fruitful in all they do because they remain rooted in the Lord. These men and women “will flourish like a palm-tree and grow like a Lebanon cedar. Planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish in the courts of our God, still bearing fruit when they are old, still full of sap, still green, to proclaim that the Lord is just (Ps 92:12-15). … The just are like trees planted near streams; they bear fruit in season and their leaves never wither. All they do prospers” (Ps 1:3-4).

How many cultures have handed down to us the fruits of their labor and the fruits of their creativity! The Jews through their worship, for example, have given us the weekend as well as the 150 psalms permeated with beauty. Among other benefits, the Greeks gave us Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle who laid the foundations for medieval and modern philosophy. The Romans were master builders, especially of roads, waterworks, and bridges. Had it not been for the medieval European monks, who would have preserved ancient and Christian culture for future generations?

Unemployment

In virtually every instance, John Paul II considered unemployment an evil and a social calamity. He placed this responsibility at the feet of the vast enterprise of employers.

For our current pontiff, Pope Francis, “work is not a gift kindly conceded to a recommended few. It is a right of all … and in particular, the young must be able to cultivate the promise of their efforts and their enthusiasm, so that the investment of their energies and their resources will not be useless” (Dec. 2015).

Men and women are our primary natural resource, and the Church has grave concerns about the unemployed and those who are under employed, the working poor. From these two groups can come other evils; the first among them is hunger. Social unrest, like disease, crime, and violence are bound to follow.

Indignities of Unemployment

As an evil of the social fabric and against individuals, unemployment robs persons in good health, ready and willing to work, from supporting themselves and their families. What happens to the family when parents lose their jobs through no fault of their own? The individual members in the family suffer in psychological as well as financial ways. Loss of the weekly paycheck weighs on the family unlike any other burden.

Losing One’s Job

Unemployment comes in different ugly shapes and sizes. It affects Blue Collar workers, Wall Street traders, educators, and other professionals. Even CEOs can be ousted from their high places.

How many are those who have gone from standing tall in satisfying and lucrative jobs to the humiliation of sleeping in nooks and crannies of store fronts, huddled up and penniless? How many men and women have experienced the indignity, the embarrassment, and the emotional heartburn of losing one’s job? The worker is summoned to the supervisor’s office only to be told his or her services are no longer needed. A cold speech is delivered in staccato fashion: ‘I’m sorry, we have to let you go, but it has to be this way. Thank you for your service.’ Often, severance pay does not accompany the loss of employment. How many have been dismissed without even being told? The names of college adjunct teachers are routinely deleted from the roster without any explanation, personal or otherwise.

And what of those new college graduates? John Paul II has written of the particularly painful problem “when the young, after preparing themselves with an appropriate cultural, technical, and professional formation, can’t find a job and see their sincere will to work frustrated, as well as their willingness to take up their responsibility for the economy and social development of the community” (Laborem Exercens:18). The indignities of unemployment!

Statistics on Employment

The August unemployment figures have been estimated at a low 4.8%, though this impressive figure feels like a lie to so many (Sarah Kendzior: Quartz, April 20, 2016).

62.6% is the figure given for those who are not participating in the work place. This means that approximately 37% is the unemployment rate. According to the Wall Street Journal, 4.8% hides the devastating lie for millions of Americans. The jobless rate is low because more and more people are no longer participating in the work place. This low percent fails to include discouraged workers and those in part-time jobs who seek full-time employment.

Another consideration has to do with sporadic work. A person who works one hour a week earning $20.00 for that hour is considered employed.

How can breadwinners support a family on the minimum wage? They can’t, these working poor.

While Labor Day focuses on the value of work, loss of employment and financial crisis can provoke despair. Surely there is a limit to how many rejections unemployed persons can sustain before they throw up their hands and succumb to hopelessness, including temptations to end it all through suicide. During times of unemployment the individual can make matters worse by rubbing it in: ‘I’m a loser; I’m a failure. Everyone knows it’ ‘Why has God permitted put me in this situation when I’ve done my best?’

The Open Wound

What can the unemployed do during the trial of unemployment? To begin with, it is important to live in the present moment and structure one’s time. While coping with this extreme hardship, energies can be given over to constructive activities that otherwise might not have been possible. Unemployed men and women have discovered their true vocation quite by accident during the so-called lost time of unemployment.

During this time, it is also important to sharpen one’s professional capabilities, for example, public speaking, retooling one’s writing skills, reading well and memorizing fine poetry. Numerous agencies need volunteers, especially in tutoring school children. Finally, there is no better advocate to plead one’s cause than St. Joseph the Worker.

Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph, Brentwood, NY, holds degrees in philosophy (Ph.L.), musicology (Ph.D.), theology (M.A.), and liturgical studies (Ph.D.). She has taught at all levels of Catholic education and writes with a particular focus on a theology of beauty and the sacred arts. Her e-mail address is jroccasalvo@optonline.net.

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FEATURES

From slavery to model of mercy – the powerful story of Julia Greeley

by CNA/EWTN News • September 7, 2016

Julia Greeley. (Archdiocese of Denver)

Denver, CO — Julia Greeley was a familiar sight on the streets of Denver in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Wearing a floppy hat, oversized shoes, and dabbing her bad eye with a handkerchief, Greeley was often seen pulling her red wagon of goods to deliver to the poor and homeless of the city. She had a particularly special devotion to the Sacred Heart, and would deliver images and information about the icon to firefighters throughout Denver every month.

Her charitable work earned her the title of a “one-person St. Vincent de Paul Society” from one writer, and has made her the local model of mercy for the Jubilee Year of Mercy.

Born a slave in Hannibal, Missouri sometime between 1833 and 1848, Greeley endured some horrific treatment – once, a whip caught her right eye and destroyed it as a slave master beat Greeley’s mother.

One of many slaves freed by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Greeley’s work with the family of William Gilpin, Colorado’s first territorial governor, brought her to Denver in 1878.

After leaving the Gilpins’ service, Greeley found odd jobs around the city, and came upon the Sacred Heart Parish of Denver, where she would convert to Catholicism in 1880. She was an enthusiastic parishioner, a daily communicant, and became an active member of the Secular Franciscan Order starting in 1901. The Jesuit priests at her parish recognized her as the most fervent promoter of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Despite her own poverty, Greeley spent much of her time collecting food, clothing and other goods for the poor. She would often do her work at night, so as to avoid embarrassing the people she was assisting.

“She stood out because of how extraordinary she was,” David Uebbing, chancellor of the Archdiocese of Denver, told the Denver Catholic.

“Even though she was only earning $10 to $12 a month cleaning and cooking, she was using it to help other people who were poor,” he said.

“That spoke volumes about the charitable heart she had. In addition, she had great devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and was known for walking (monthly) to 20 different firehouses to give (felt) badges of the Sacred Heart and tracts to firemen. That brings to life the corporal and spiritual works of mercy this holy year is dedicated to.”

Julia Greeley died on June 7, 1918 - the Feast of the Sacred Heart. Although her death came unexpectedly, she was able to receive last rites. It is estimated that she was around 80 years old, though because she was born into slavery, her exact age was never known.

After her death, her body lay in state in a Catholic parish for five hours, during which a constant stream of people came to pay their last respects to the well-known, well-loved woman.

A documentary about Greeley, based on the book In Secret Service of the Sacred Heart: The Life and Virtues of Julia Greeley, has been produced by the Archdiocese of Denver for the year of Mercy.

Mary Leisring, president of the Julia Greeley Guild, told Denver Catholic that she was happy about the recognition Greeley was receiving during the Year of Mercy.

“We had a saint walking the streets of Denver, yet very few people know about her.”

This article was originally published Jan. 28, 2016.

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SUNDAY • SEPTEMBER 11, 2016

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

First Reading (Ex 32:7-11, 13-14; NRSVCE)

The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.”

But Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’” And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

Second Reading (1 Tm 1:12-17; NRSVCE)

I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners — of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

Gospel Reading (Lk 15:1-10; NRSVCE)

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

So he told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

MONDAY • SEPTEMBER 12, 2016

Monday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (1 Cor 11:17-26, 33; NRSVCE)

Now in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. For, to begin with, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and to some extent I believe it. Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine. When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you!

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.

Gospel Reading (Lk 7:1-10; NRSVCE)

After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. A centurion there had a slave whom he valued highly, and who was ill and close to death. When he heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, asking him to come and heal his slave. When they came to Jesus, they appealed to him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us.” And Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to say to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed. For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it.” When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.

TUESDAY • SEPTEMBER 13, 2016

Memorial of Saint John Chrysostom

First Reading (1 Cor 12:12-14, 27-31a; NRSVCE)

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? But strive for the greater gifts.

Gospel Reading (Lk 7:11-17; NRSVCE)

Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people!” This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

WEDNESDAY • SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

First Reading (Nm 21:4b-9; NRSVCE)

From Mount Hor the Israelites set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

Second Reading (Phil 2:6-11; NRSVCE)

Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death —

even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name

that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bend,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

Gospel Reading (Jn 3:13-17; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to Nicodemus, “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

THURSDAY • SEPTEMBER 15, 2016

Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows

First Reading (1 Cor 15:1-11; NRSVCE)

I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you — unless you have come to believe in vain.

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them — though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.

Gospel Reading (Jn 19:25-27; NRSVCE)

Standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

FRIDAY • SEPTEMBER 16, 2016

Memorial of Saints Cornelius and Cyprian

First Reading (1 Cor 15:12-20; NRSVCE)

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ — whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.

Gospel Reading (Lk 8:1-3; NRSVCE)

Jesus went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.

SATURDAY • SEPTEMBER 17, 2016

Saturday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (1 Cor 15:35-37, 42-49; NRSVCE)

Someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.

So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.

Gospel Reading (Lk 8:4-15; NRSVCE)

When a great crowd gathered and people from town after town came to Jesus, he said in a parable: “A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell on the path and was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on the rock; and as it grew up, it withered for lack of moisture. Some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew with it and choked it. Some fell into good soil, and when it grew, it produced a hundredfold.” As he said this, he called out, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”

Then his disciples asked him what this parable meant. He said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but to others I speak in parables, so that

‘looking they may not perceive,

and listening they may not understand.’

“Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. The ones on the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe only for a while and in a time of testing fall away. As for what fell among the thorns, these are the ones who hear; but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. But as for that in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance.”